Lakshmi

Ram, Malibaliporum

Rode a night train today; all the way from the brisk air of a funky mountain hamlet, back to the familiar beach of Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal. As our future rooms were still occupied, I meandered my way to the beach where I was greeted by Lakshmi, the pretty twelve-year-old fisherman's daughter whose acquaintance I'd made the week before. "You go for a boat trip with my dad today, yes?" Her smile was broad; two long black pig tails, radiant dark South Indian face. How could I say no to that? "Tell your dad we'll meet him in an hour."

Freshwater rounds up the road-burned troops, all hung over the furniture watching Terminator on the resort big screen since our rooms aren't ready yet. Creaky comrades, but if I can only get 'em to the beach, reserve tanks will no doubt kick in.

Last week, we had ridden on a full blown boat. Granted, a Boston Whaler type; open, outboard motor, plenty terrifying enough when the adrenaline-pumped fishermen are gunning the thing up and through the walls of three-wave breaks, black smoke whirring, paddling furiously along with the engine, bowman digging his 2x4 into the crest of a wall to pull the thing through; spinning head round to alert his stern man, shouting, smiling, shouting, shouting, smiling, muscles tensed the whole time; his feet never left the deck as he hunkered over on the bow, while his seven passengers were airborne on the back of a bull.

Have you ever stared a wall of water in the face? There's something primal about it. It breathes life into you in a way that makes you ten again - which, other than Lakshmi's irresistible face, was of course why I had to say yes and then go find my friends.

When we returned, there was no whaler. Today, the wealthy owner of that boat was beyond the horizon bagging his twenty-dollar fortune. But there sat Ram, all 130 pounds of him, a compact frame of shiny black muscle, shaved head, smiling. He jumped up and took both my hands. "Hello friend! Today we take you on my catamaran!"

I'd been watching the inventors of this craft for a week. Nothing but a bundle of curved logs bound together, and an outboard motor with the longest driveshaft I'd ever seen bolted to the back. You oughtta see these guys launch them; seems like half the village carries them down to the licking surf, before leaving it to the three crewmen who rock back and forth with each dying wave, waiting for just the split second to lunge their craft into the retreating water.

"You can take seven of us on that thing?" A confident nod was my answer.

So, what is the difference between a whaler and a catamaran? Well, when you are on a pile of logs you are as much in the sea as on it; you are as much brushing those walls as riding over 'em; you rise and fall on the very surface of the water, as Ram’s people have done for ten thousand years.

We swam in the open sea. Ram goofed around under water as if he were a shark. "My English very bad! Only seven years of school." Yet we talked about his four daughters, his wife, his mother; the family that resides in his small but tidy beach-side house. This is a family dynamic that is no easy feat in old India. Marriages are arranged and brides require a dowry. Ram shakes his head in shared recognition of this fact, yet his demeanor reveals the great dowry that lives inside his girls, and a business mind that is modest but solid.

As I glanced over the glimmering water in the afternoon breeze, in slow and deliberate English I said, "This seems like it could be a good life." Ram wasted no time pondering his response. "This is a poor life. The life of a fisherman is not a good life. You are a wealthy man, I am a poor fisherman. I work very hard and have very little in return." Except for a fantastic family; and a hoard of men there to greet him every evening, to grab a hold of him and his boat when the last wave of his twenty-four hour day sends them crashing onto the beach. I didn't know quite how to convey this to him though, so I moved on. “Are your daughters married to fishermen?" "No, no. No fishermen; a mechanic; a teacher. They have all moved away; Chennai, Pondicherry."

After we crashed onto the beach, into the strong hands of his waiting posse, we were invited back to his house for coconut juice. As we sat on the cool tile floor, Lakshmi shared with us her sea shell treasures, while dad scaled the backyard palms and went to work hacking out coconut cups with his large machete. The best part about Ram's cups is you get to eat their sweet meat from the inside when you're done drinking fresh juice.

As we sat talking in his narrow entryway, I took in how Lakshmi interacted with a visiting uncle. It became quickly apparent to me that he had tremendous respect for his young niece. Their conversation seemed more like one that would take place between two adults; two folks with a warm respect for the insights of the other; passing a hot summer afternoon in relaxed conversation, cross-legged across from one another on the cool cement floor. We had all noticed how she had interacted with the boys on the beach. It was clear that they had deferred to her, and that she was a leader among them. I think we all, at some point in the day, had commented on her to Ram. He smiled. "The name Lakshmi means 'fortune'. The day she was born we caught many fish; many shrimp; many prawn. Lakshmi makes even the old people of the village jovial." She has no doubt made their family a wealthy one.

Ram continued, "For her we have arranged the best marriage of all. She will marry my wife's brother's son." As strange as it sounds in our culture, in Tamil Nadu such a union is held in the highest esteem. If some genetic mutation doesn't double on itself, I have faith that Lakshmi's marriage will be a happy one. In a land where wifely subjugation is all too common, her interactions with her future father-in-law appear a good omen.

It seems fitting that I would spend my last weekend in India on the coast of the Indian Ocean; along a shoreline where humanity first discovered the riches of an aquatic harvest; upon which were built the first great civilizations; next door to a people who, other than the outboard motors they have slapped on the back of their vessels, still practice their craft as it has been done since the dawn of history; who now also live on the edge of one of the greatest seas of modern humanity.

Their future visions, however, are no longer gazing seaward. Instead of looking into the blinding rays of the rising sun, they will be looking at the interior upon which it shines. An interior that is teeming with one-fifth of the world's people; a nuclear power; a country with one flag and five-hundred languages; a democracy in which secularism is the norm but Hindu nationalists are threatening disharmony much as the Christian right is doing in the U.S.; a country with some of the brightest engineers, doctors, and writers in the world, and beggars on every other corner, many living beneath crude tarps, their feet and arms eaten by leprosy or the machetes of desperate parents looking to earn a pity-filled buck; an emerging market in which business men broker deals via their cell-phones while on the back of bicycle rickshaws, and posh shopping malls spring up from urban decay—also allowing neighborhood women to do the day's dishes in their garage-level bathrooms. Family is everything. Religion is bountiful. Color is everywhere. Traffic is an insane videogame of buses, bicycles, trucks, cows, sedans, and the occasional elephant; with me sprawled leisurely in a rickshaw's back seat, my senses now immune…

…Save for a few tranquil days on a timeless beach, as the guest of a fisherman—who casts his boat each day from a subcontinent of contradictions into the purity of an ancient and noble craft.

(8/11/2003)