[Reader-list] Madurai

[sou dhamini]

Hi,  I’m giving below, a brief abstract of my project along with my 
first posting.

MADURAI
Representations Old  and  New.

Project Abstract

An image of a city in people’s minds is made up as much by 
statistical facts as by associations. In the Tamil consciousness, 
Madurai is the First City, not  Madras/Chennai.  Pandyan  capital, 
seat of the Sangam, temple town, home of the jasmine flower -  
malli, and ‘sungudi’  sari,  Madurai  is  both  a  mythic city and 
a real one.

I use the word  myth, in the sense that  Roland Barthes  does,  as 
‘a  kind of speech.’   Like speech, myth is  consensual and 
generative.  It  stays in parlance and determines people’s ideas 
and behaviour  towards the world around them.  It determines for 
instance whether they feel a sense of belonging or alienation in a 
city, as  inhabitant or visitor.

What I seek to do  is not to de-bunk the myth, but to become aware 
of its many layers of significance. The  image of the city that 
will then emerge  will be ideational rather than merely physical, 
prismatic rather than two or even three dimensional.

I will be studying earlier images of the city as represented  in  
public culture – and attempting  to create my own, on digital video 
  – ultimately, for public television.


First  Pitch

I want to approach the city from two directions. From outside – as 
a visitor, researcher, explorer. And  from the inside, through the 
character of a young (fictional) girl growing up there.

Both positions are ambivalent.

The outsider may feel a sense  of belonging  because what he/she ( 
I don’t know yet if this is a person or just a voice or roving eye 
or a mere sub-title or what?) is relating to is an idea of the city 
which he(for the moment lets keep it this way) has gleaned from 
books, from songs, from movies, from critical enquiry and a 
concerted effort to understand.

The insider on the other hand  may feel alienated,  because the 
city and its hidden codes which I call ‘culture’, do not 
accommodate  her personal desires and needs. So her concerted 
effort has to be to cleave her way through the culture and 
re-configure it to suit her  requirements.

At the same time, as an object of study, the city may confound the 
researcher at many levels. The reality of present day  Madurai may 
contradict what he has come to expect of the ‘mythic’ city from his 
various sources.

While the young girl, discovering/forging her niche space within 
its hidden recesses, or even in the familiar license with which she 
demands acknowledgement/ acceptance (as one does with one’s 
parents) may unravel its innards with the ease of a biologist.

Another way of seeing the outside inside question is to state it 
this way.  The  researcher  supposes the city is outside himself. 
The girl has to  shed  the city  that conditions/holds her in 
thrall,  to emerge as a person.

Between these two – not opposing but complementary - lines of 
force, the city should unfurl  with its own being/reality, on 
screen. At least that’s the intention.
Method

The fiction tends to write itself out. Peeps in over my shoulder 
all the while that I’m poring over stuff and then settles down as 
image tracts in my mind when I’m ‘doing nothing’. I like to think 
of this process as reflection – in the physics sense of the term. 
That the  mind throws back, with an equal degree of intensity,  
what has assaulted it as incident rays of information input. Or 
maybe refraction is a better term, for it’s  really as if it passes 
through  another medium and emerges deflected. That’s why I like 
the idea of the prism rather than the lens, for the mind.

For the rest, I’m just reading for the moment. Just finished a 
really well written book (in Tamil) called “Society in the Sangam 
Times”. Was really pleasantly surprised because I had no notion 
cultural  anthropology  was ‘on’ in Tamil scholarship. But this 
book by K.Subramanian, published by New Century Book House in 1982, 
does a fantastic study of the Sangam times (about 500 B.C. to 
roughly 300 A.D.)  as a transition period between tribal society 
and the first settlers. He traces remnants of the tribal way of 
life in people’s continued  belief -  in magic and mana, animism 
and fetishism, all  barely getting  overlaid  by primitive 
religion,  in the presence (though transmuted) of totems and 
taboos, in  the process of the formation of primitive  myths, right 
under our noses  so to speak, and in the practise of rituals – 
dances, ceremonies and sacrifices and the gradual shift from 
matriarchy to patriarchy.  He also studies social constructs  like 
ways  of eating,  the role and identity of the leader, and very 
interestingly, the role of the artist – and patronage.

I’m not sure if its state of the art cultural anthropology but its 
definitely strong on fundamentals
Besides other  Tamil scholars, he quotes extensively from  Morgan, 
Engels, Frazer, D.D.Kosambi,  E.O.James and Raymond  Firth. His 
source texts  incidentally are the Sangam poems. Again, I am not 
sure if creative writing should be taken as historical evidence – 
this will soon become crucial to my own work too – but in the 
quotations that he uses it is pretty easy to distinguish the 
‘poetic conceit’ from the authentic detail. It is reassuring to 
know that documentary and fiction are not seen as polarities within 
this tradition but as environment and – flower?

An important idea I gleaned from this book is that the origin of 
the city as we know it, the ‘urban consciousness’, appears first in 
the riverine, agricultural settlement, ( so much for the 
rural-urban divide!) with the beginnings of a surplus economy. When 
it becomes possible for one man – who will become king – to live by 
others’ labour –  agricultural/trade, military and intellectual 
labour. The first cities were high rise structures with divisive 
fortification – against enemies but also beyond the common man. And 
the first urban art forms came to be performed for audiences – the 
king and his family, the militia and the ministry. Until then, 
there was no audience. Everyone was an artiste, singing  and 
dancing together.  This is an important distinction for me.

There is also in this deceptively simple book, another crucial 
chapter which we at Sarai should find very relevant. This is a 
chapter  on networking spaces within Sangam society. Its tough – 
almost impossible – to give the  flavour of the original words. 
Irukkai  - sitting together – is the tribal collective that 
apparently took place everyday in the morning , when the whole 
tribe met along with the tribal chief, who sat as one among them, 
and planned the day’s forays for food. This came to be called  Naal 
Irukkai – sitting together in the day. And  invariably they drank. 
Hence the added epithet – Naal magizhirukkai.  Magizh  is  a lovely 
word  with resonances  of  both joy and wine. And then they danced 
– a ritual dance in preparation for the hunt or to appease a god  
or to pray for rain. And then in the evening they danced again, in 
celebration or in thanksgiving. And all these were networking  
activities in which the whole community participated.

The television today is for me precisely such a space. It is 
completely incidental that there is a sophisticated technology 
behind it  and literally  between the audience and performer. The 
pitch of television is such that it  creates a community. Its 
aesthetics are functional, its  content the stuff of life itself, 
everyone is a hero on TV.   And yes, we watch it daily.

Where it falls short, and significantly so, is in providing ritual 
content. Which is where I come in, female shaman  of the urban 
jungle, about to blow away the cobwebs of dry habit (no  one has 
fears any more) from people’s  minds. Devaratti  - she who shook 
the gods, I would have been called in  Sangam times!

Do write in with any comments, suggestions, recommendations. Could 
we retain the subject title of  Madurai  on all mails on this topic 
for quick access. I’m traveling over the next two weeks but will 
read carefully on return.

Looking forward and best regards,
Soudhamini








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