Among the many Hindu sites I visited  in Vizag, I came upon Aastana Hazrat Baba Syed Tajuddin Shah Qadari’s Dargah (A Sufi Saint’s Shrine), nestled away on Dolphin Konda (hill). The Hindu newspaper even did a cover on this dargah two years ago and I can safely say that it looks intact and the existing Baba Mohammad Siddique is still alive and I met him. I wasn’t planning to visit the shrine but I had heard that there was a famous dargah there visited by Hindus and Muslims alike. Detouring down the road from the Dolphin Lighthouse I found the dargah a silent and secluded sanctum. The room pictured in the article by The Hindu is a newer construction, one where Baba Sheikh Fareed Shakarganj’s chilla (grave) rests and to which people offer their dua (prayers). The entire dargah plot consists of two rooms and seven nishanis (flag posts). Each flag post is dedicated to a Sufi Saint in the lineage of Baba Syed Tajuddin Shah Quadri. Having just taken a class on Sufism in the Spring and finally able to converse with someone fluent in Hindi, I decided to stop for a while and talk to the local keeper there, a young murid (student) of the living Baba Mohammad Siddique.

I was told that the first marker upon Dolphin hill was the little room I visited first (not pictured in the articles) where a little lamp burns. This room was the meditation chamber for Aastana Hazrat Baba Syed Tajuddin Shah Qadari, from the lineage of Abdul Qadar al-Jilani (a popular Sufi Master among south Indians). His meditation chamber was accordingly small, about 3 ft cuboid. Most Sufi masters believed that smaller rooms were perfect for initiating meditation chambers and little rooms upon secluded caves were an ideal choice. Today visitors (Hindus mostly) break coconuts in that room and offer incense to the lamp there.  Mughal Prince Salim was among the first to discover this spot and erected a nishani for Ali (The son of Prophet Muhammad) marking the spot for the future dargah. Every week dhikr is hosted in this dargah too and participants come from all over the country to seek counsel from Baba Mohammad Siddique who offers prayers, incense, and flowers on their behalf to the chilla. To enter the dargah one firsts performs ablutions (washing hands and feet) and one buys incense and/or coconut and visits each shrine to remember the saints. After completion one sits down to pray/ meditates beside the chilla. Finally a murid offers you tea and a meal (if available) before you go onward on your day.

Emblematizing the syncretism of two very distinct faiths (Hindu and Muslim) I found this dargah more peaceful than my visit to temples this trip. Not to privilege silence over noise or prioritize the peacefulness of the dargah over the chaotic worship in the Kalika Durgamma or Simhachalam Narasimha Temples visited earlier that day, however, there was something very distinct about the temples and the dargah that indicated the nature of the visits people make to ‘places of worship’. I have often wondered why Hindus go to the temple. Every home does have an elaborate altar housing deities and their favorite offerings.  It certainly isn’t “tranquility” that is sought in a temple especially when pressed up against foreign bodies struggling to catch a glimpse/ touch of a faraway god.  On second thought, perhaps Hindu temple visitors wish to seek something outside of their homes, an altar among altars, erected, demarcated as sacred, beyond the mundane home-world. Temples are also like amusement parks where families, neighbors, and like-minded community members meet and greet each other, like church on Sundays. Unlike the dargah I recently visited, the temple is not always a meditation space. What then is the relationship between tranquility and worship?

The visit itself is the journey, one that takes you through the gullies and gutters that eventually make its way to the womb (garbagriha/ inner sanctum) of the Hindu temple. You hardly feel clean while entering either. Having deposited your footwear somewhere and washed your hands, you slowly make your way into the ‘belly of the whale’. Your nose tickled with intoxicating smells, the soles of your feet wet with slimy and cool washed-off offerings, your eyes tear up in the smoke that rises from people’s homa yajnas, you hear chanting and bells resounding and  you slowly become aware of how much there is happening around you while you join in with your tongue softly whispering shlokas. It illuminates one of the sensory triggers that occur during worship. Maybe worship for Hindus isn’t about cleansing oneself of the world and entering a quiet place for praying but rather diving into the deep end using the senses while trying to remember who it is we are visiting.  I was especially reminded of this when I was lost in all the chaos around me, offering money to the priests, taking the various prasad and holy water they offered at the Durga temple that I had forgotten to see that I was facing Durgamma herself. To use another analogy, remember Arjuna from the Mahabharata, the excellent archer who always has his eye on the prize? During the archery competition set by Guru Drona for Kshatriya warriors, Arjuna is the only one who is able to shoot the rotating fish in the eye while looking down at its’ reflection in the water pool below.  Visiting Hindu temples makes more sense when you apply that principle of archery – always remembering  why you are there while getting lost in the little things around you is so much of life and its’ journey.

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.” ― John Keats

One of the most rewarding parts of my trip to Vizag (Vishakhapatnam) was meeting Dr. Prasanna Sree. Having sacrificed a lot of her personal time and efforts, Prasanna Ma’am has contributed tremendously to the upliftment and benefit of the tribal populations of India. Locating the need for communication and preservation of tribal languages and cultures, she has developed scripts for 13 different tribal languages. Moreover she is also a poet at heart and has published several volumes of her own as well as writings on tribal women and subaltern literature. She is also from a tribe and the first in her family to be educated in an English medium school. Her unique abilities and her gumption have made her efforts worthwhile but her recognition little. I found her in the English Department, cheerfully teaching women studies to a class of about 6 students while juggling viva exams for her PhD scholars (equivalent of Comps). In my American Women Studies courses there would hardly ever be a male enroller. However in this class of 6 students, 5 were men and only one was a woman. 3 of the students were from neighboring tribal areas. The importance of what is learned at school is directly relevant to their everyday experiences.  Perhaps the hardest ordeal for Prof.Prasanna was to describe how women and men need not have gendered roles when the world surrounding these students still frowns upon liberal career-minded women.  Just meeting her I learned quickly that my project on Bommai Golu/ Bommalu Koluvu as it is called in Telegu, is going to be vastly enriched. Erected in upper-caste and middle-class urban Tamil homes, the arrangement and display of possessions and ritually treating objects can also be found even among the tribal groups of India. The wooden dolls, lac painting and gloss, and the intricately woven cloths handed down from mother to daughter, are all indicative of a traditional and culturally primitive habit of humans – ritually treating, assembling, and displaying their collections of artifacts. Prof.Prasanna told me that for her Koluvu appears as “a curio for the entertainment and pleasure of human beings. Just as God plays with humans and their lives, so too, for these ten days women get to play god”. Through her position I see that Koluvu maintains a strong hand of human agency, where women get to nurture and destroy the pictures they wish depict of their homes, their worlds, and their gods.

   The second leg of my journey had a little detour in a place called Vishakapatnam (Vizag). Initially I was to go directly to Kondapalli but after gathering tips from local doll makers in Tirupati I decided to visit some neighboring villages of Vizag where dolls are made from wood and polished with lac (plant secreted glue). Dolls from these areas are known for their unique designs and they are recognized from the dull colors used to paint them. While Kondapalli dolls maybe gaily colored and depict King’s processions, Etikoppaka dolls are made with dull earthly colors, used from natural dyes and depicting household utility items and children’s toys. The laborious process of making these dolls has led to this art form almost disappearing completely. Traditionally a tribal practice, wherein these dolls were even used their own rituals; today these dolls are exported out of Etikoppaka to neighboring towns and cities like Chennai where they adorn women’s Golu displays. Nowadays farmers use whatever wood is available to them (not the traditional Alusu maram) and they use synthetic coloring instead of natural dyes. However in recent times one particular entrepreneur has successfully maintained the early practice and ensured its’ continuity through forming a safe company where Etikoppaka dolls and the craft of making them is preserved and taught to new generations. 

     These dolls are not just used in Golu but I recall having the original Etikoppaka rattle in my own home growing up. A favorite toy, the rattle has 3 poles covered with circular discs on either end upon which three cylindrical pieces of wood were housed that when rattled make a crackling sound. Safe to chew on for babies, this naturally made doll is a favorite for mothers who want to keep their children occupied but also wanted safety and soft noises.

  Having met some artisans I am hooked on the word process. This word came up over and over again in my many conversations with them. The word “process” also came up in my art course as an undergraduate. My professor Ron Mills used to say that art involves “process” without which even the greatest of skills is nothing but a doodle. The process took a painfully long time and involved multiplying one’s simple skill into a masterpiece. For example take Vincent Van Gogh; though one of his skills was the technique of brush-stroke painting, his work becomes art only when he multiplied his technique (stretched across a canvas space with little strokes) to create the Starry Night. The Etikoppaka doll makers are not considered artists, and yet their work involves a similar process: converting a simple technique and multiplying it with years of experience. After all gathering experience is also a process and involves skill, technique, and time. They have experience in the process and the process in turn garners them experience. Perhaps every manufacturer is then an artist? I might be sounding highly capitalist, but in today’s world, where my neighbor makes jewellery that is available on Etsy, what separates an artist from a producer of goods/services? I am confused then about how art derives its’ value. If the artwork is unique and involves a process it has a price – most of Etsy’s creations fall in that category. In today’s economy however (one could even owe it to the printing press) each thing can be re-produced. Pictures are no longer original, copies can be emailed and saved and deleted without ever holding a picture in one’s hand. From where then does art derive its value?