“Those are the ardhanari,” said Tofaa. “What would you call them? Androgynes. Hermaphrodites. As you can see, they have bosoms like women. But you cannot see, until you pay for the privilege, that they have the nether organs of both men and women.”
“Well, well. I had always supposed them mythical beings. But I daresay, if they had to exist anywhere, it would be here.”
“We being a very civilized people,” said Tofaa, “we let the ardhanari parade freely about the streets, and openly ply their trade, and dress as elegantly as any women. The law requires only that they also wear the headdress of a man.”
“Not to deceive the unwary.”
“Exactly. A man who seeks an ordinary woman can hire a devanasi temple whore. But the ardhanari, although unsanctioned by any temple, are kept far more busy than the devanasi, since they can serve women as well as men. I am told they can even do both at once.”
“And that other man, yonder?” I asked, pointing. “Is he also peddling his nether parts?”
If he was, he could have sold them by bulk weight. He was carrying them before him in a tremendous basket which he held by both hands. Although the parts were still attached to his body, his dhoti diaper could not have contained them. The basket was completely filled by his testicular sac, which was leathery and wrinkled and veined like an elephant’s hide, and the testicles inside it must each have been twice the size of the man’s head. Just to see the sight made my own parts hurt in sympathy and revulsion.
“Look below his dhoti,” said Tofaa, “and you will see that he also has legs of elephant thickness and elephant skin. But do not feel sorry for him, Marco-wallah. He is only a paraiyar afflicted with the Shame of Santomè. Santomè is our name for the Christian saint you call Thomas.”
The explanation was even more astounding than the sight of the pitiable man-elephant. I said unbelievingly, “What would this benighted land know of Saint Thomas?”
“He is buried somewhere near here, or so it is said. He was the first Christian missionary ever to visit India, but he was not well received, because he tried to minister to the vile paraiyar outcasts, which disgusted and offended the good jati folk. So they paid Santomè’s own congregation of paraiyar converts to slay him, and—”
“His own congregation? And they did it?”
“The paraiyar will do anything for a copper coin. Dirty work is what they are for. However, Santomè must have been a powerfully holy man, albeit a heathen. The men who slew him, and their paraiyar descendants ever since, have been cursed with the Shame of Santomè,”
We pressed on to the center of the city, where stood the Raja’s palace. To get to it we had to cross a commodious market square, as crowded as all market squares, but on this day not with commerce. There was some kind of festa in progress, so Tofaa and I made our way across it leisurely, to let me see how the Hindus celebrated a joyous occasion. They seemed to be doing it more dutifully than joyously, I decided, for I could not see a happy or animated face anywhere. In fact, the faces, besides having a more than usually ornate measle painted on the forehead, were smeared with what looked like mud, but smelled worse.
“Dung of the sacred cattle,” said Tofaa. “First they wash their faces in the cows’ urine, then put the dung on their eyes, cheeks and breast.”
I refrained from any comment except, “Why?”
“This festival is in honor of Krishna, the God of Many Mistresses and Lovers. When Krishna was only a lad, you see, he was a simple cowherd, and it was in the cowshed that he did his first seductions of the local milkmaids and his fellow cowherds’ wives. So this festival, in addition to being a blithe celebration of high-spirited lovemaking, also has its aspect of solemnity in honoring Krishna’s sacred cows. That music the musicians are playing, you hear it?”
“I hear it. I did not know it was music.”
The players were grouped about a platform in the middle of the square, wringing noises from an assortment of devices—cane flutes, hand drums, wooden pipes, stringed things. In all that concert of strident screeching and twanging and squawking, the only perceptibly sweet notes came from a single instrument like a very long-necked lute with a gourd body, having three metal strings played with a plectrum on the musician’s forefinger. The Hindu audience sweatily massed roundabout looked as morosely unmoved by the music and as barely enduring of it as I imagine I did.
“What the musicians are playing,” said Tofaa, “is the kudakuttu, the pot-dance of Krishna, based on an ancient song the cowherds have always sung to their cows while milking them.”
“Ah. Yes. If you had given me time, I should probably have guessed something like that.”
“Here comes a lovely nach girl. Let us stay and watch her dance Krishna’s pot-dance.”
A brown-black and substantial female, lovely perhaps by the standards Tofaa had previously recited to me, and properly mammalian for the cow-worship occasion, got laboriously onto the platform, carrying a large clay pot—symbolic of Krishna’s milking pot, I assumed—and began limbering up by doing various poses with it. She tried shifting it from one arm’s crook to the other, and put it on top of her head a few times, and occasionally stamped a broad foot, evidently clearing the platform of ants.
Tofaa confided to me, “The worshipers of Krishna are the most lighthearted and blithesome of all the Hindu sects. Many condemn them for preferring gaiety to gravity and vivacity to meditation. But, as you see, they imitate the carefree Krishna, and they maintain that enjoyment of life gives bliss, and bliss gives serenity, and serenity gives wisdom, all together making for wholeness of soul. That is what the nach girl’s pot-dance conveys.”
“I should like to see that. When does she commence?”
“What do you mean? You are seeing that.”
“I mean the dance.”
“That is the dance!”
We continued on across the square—Tofaa seeming exasperated, but I not feeling much chastened—through the crowd of woebegone and nearly inanimate celebrants, and to the palace gates. I was carrying Kubilai’s ivory plaque slung on my chest, and Tofaa explained to the two gate guards what it represented. They were clad in not very military-looking dhotis and holding their spears at lazily disparate angles, and they shrugged as if disinclined either to bow us in or to take the trouble to keep us out. We went through a dusty courtyard and into a palace which was at least palatially built of stone, not the mud-and-dung that constituted most of Kumbakonam.
We were received by a steward—perhaps of some rank, since he wore a clean dhoti—and he did seem impressed by my pai-tzu and Tofaa’s explanation of it. He fell flat on his face, and then scrabbled off like a crab, and Tofaa said we should follow him. We did, and found ourselves in the throne room. By way of describing the richness and magnificence of that hall, I will only say that the four legs of the throne stood in tureens full of oil, to keep the local kaja snakes from climbing up into the seat and to keep the local white ants from gnawing and collapsing the whole thing. The steward motioned for us to wait, and scuttled off through another door.
“Why does that man go about on his belly?” I asked Tofaa.
“He is being respectful in the presence of his betters. We too must do so, when the Raja joins us. Not fall down, but make sure your head is never higher than his. I will nudge you at the proper moment.”
Half a dozen men came in just then, and stood in a line and regarded us impassively. They were as nondescript in person as any of the celebrants out in the square, but they were gorgeously attired in gold-threaded dhotis, and even fine jackets to cover their torsos, and almost neatly wound tulbands. For the first time in India, I supposed I was meeting some people of upper class, probably the Raja’s retinue of ministers, so I began a speech for Tofaa to translate, addressing them as “My lords,” and starting to introduce myself.