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December 29, 2004
For the Woman With the Green Eyes and the Children of Mahabalipuram
The last several days have been extraordinarily difficult, watching the news coverage of the devestation across South Asia. It seems only yesterday that Susanne and I were in Mahabalipuram, India, along the coast of Tamil Nadu, marveling its amazing Shore Temple.
Walking from the Temple, we met lots of children, eager to show off the latest stone carvings made by local artisans. Here's what I wrote in my journal that day:
It was getting very breezy and the salt spray was strong, so we headed inland past the temple and down a street lined with small restaurants and stalls of stone cutters. Stone carving and masonry is still alive and well in Mahabalipuram, and each shop would show off its artisans' work, from small soapstone paperweights to massive marble shrines of Hindu gods, which were sold to temples around the world. As you walked down the unpaved road, it was impossible to not notice the constant clicking of stonemason's tools patiently pounding on rocks of all sizes. There were so many sculptors chipping granite, the staccato sounds of their work continuously swirled around you like some strange John Cage performance art piece. But such hard work would never get in the way of the hard sell - from within every shop, the carvers would yell out to you, "Mister, please, come and see my statues. Very good work...." Often they would have their children come out and try to bring you inside, but unlike in other cities, these kids would just as soon give up their charge and spend their time playing and running around rather than escorting dumb tourists like us back to father's showroom....
As we strolled along the street, we stopped at a small cafe run by a beautiful young woman with striking green eyes and European facial features, but dark black hair and Tamil coloring. "The Pepsis were cheap and they were playing this odd westernish music that sounding like Prince performing lounge standards," I wrote that day. "The woman who ran the cafe was striking, yet not particularly Indian. She must have a significant amount of Portuguese or French blood, for both cultures dominated parts of the south for many centuries."
Mahabalipuram lies on the shore of the Indian Ocean, just south of Chennai (Madras). Watching the news the last several days, I couldn't stop thinking of the Shore Temple, the children, the stonemasons -- and more than anyone else, the Woman With the Green Eyes. According to an AP wire story about Mahabalipuram, at least 15 townspeople were killed, around 100 total in the surrounding villages. That charming strip of shops, cafes, and stonemason shops were washed completely away. Amazingly, all that is left standing is the 1,200-year-old Shore Temple, thanks to an engineering project initiated by Indira Gandhi.
Compared to so many other villages that lost everything, Mahabalipuram may have gotten off lucky; nonetheless, livelihoods have been ruined, families destroyed. I have no idea what happened to the children we met in Mahabalipuram, to the Woman With the Green Eyes. I suppose I will never know. I can only hope they survived. No matter their fate, I dedicate this blog to them.
I've made my contribution to the Red Cross -- have you? -Andy
Posted by acarvin at December 29, 2004 8:14 PM
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