Objective: To reveal the epic in the ordinary and create a cultural and historical narrative from the inner lives' of India's urbanites, through the mediums' of photography and writing.
Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, who besides holding a PhD in Geography from Kent State University has also worked as a teacher of geography for over 25 years and is known for his cheeky and subtle sense of humour. I meet Chandra at a coffee shop on St. Mark's road, chosen for its quietness.
This identity of the Tamil Brahmin, what’s happening to it today?
This is purely anecdotal but I see more and more young people reverting or embracing of the identity of the Tamil Brahmin. True expression happens when people leave their country. I believe that people can express themselves in the Diaspora more than they can here. When your homeland doesn’t offer you the freedom to exist freely, people will leave and in time they will have another homeland. The further people travel the more they embrace their identities. That’s an old paradigm actually.
Would you say that you have experienced this lack of freedom to exist freely here in India and that is why you left for the US at one point?
I have never experienced this oppression so many people talk about, as I have never lived in Tamil Nadu where a lot of it happened. I am the 6th of 6 sons. By the time the 6th kid comes along my parents had become quite laissez-faire. I recall my dad saying even a monkey is cuter than you. I muttered that I was sitting here. They said they knew! This was amazing as it gave me freedom and the chance to explore a different course in my life.
Laughs
How important is the idea of being a brahmin to you?
You become a Brahmin by observing certain rituals and having certain practices. Like vegetarianism, using vibuthi or sacred ash on your forehead, going to the temple and performing pooja. My parents had come to believe by the time I came along that it is largely if not solely your value system that makes you a Brahmin. This was in practice in home all the time in the way “non Brahmin” people so to speak were treated. That is everyone was welcome in the kitchen, something orthodox households might frown upon, and how their “good qualities” were extolled and appreciated.
Learning Suprabatham, the name given to Sanskrit hymns recited in the morning to awaken the Lord was very important too. I am an Iyer and we had all this from a very young age. You had to learn when you were 6 or 7. In the 60’s every Saturday morning on the radio we would hear Suprabatham on the radio until my uncle got us this device from the Grundig telephone company – a spool to spool thingy. I listened to Venkatesha Suprabhatam by listening to a spool tape copy of M.S. Subbulakshmi’s rendition. I can actually see that thing. I could recite the Suprabatham along with that.
I can actually see it now. Really.
So you were taught these things and Tamil, the language of all Tamil Brahmins even though you lived in Karnataka where Kannada is ostensibly the local language.
In the first standard I started learning Tamil at the Kamala Nehru Makkala Mandira school in Bangalore. They taught all second languages, even Urdu. We had a brilliant teacher. I learned beautiful Tamil from her. In third standard, I was shifted to Kannada as second language so that I could get a job more easily in the future, since it was the official language of the state! This, based upon one single suggestion made by Mr. Nanjundaiah a highly respected and famous teacher.
I remember asking my mother what the language of the suprabhatam was. Mother said it was called ‘samskrtam’. I would keep asking my mother about the beautiful sounds coming from that Grundig machine and she would say “You can learn samskrtam in high school”. By the 8th standard I wanted to study Sanskrit. I could hardly wait. It was not until 1971 that I could finally learn Sanskrit.
So these sounds from the Grundig machine were really important to you. This learning of something you might not have understood at that time.
That Suprabatham opened up all kinds of doors later. To Carnatic music, a love for Tamil and Kannada literature. Things I memorized affected my whole life. I studied Sanskrit from my 8th std till college. I memorized things because I liked the sound of it initially. Later I learned so much through my knowledge of Sanskrit.
A person gets ¼ of his learning from teacher, ¼ from his own intelligence. ¼ his fellow students, ¼ from the passage of time. This I learned in Sanskrit class and it’s amazing how it influences what I do and who I am today. I see myself as an educator more than anything else now and that was a beginning, that learning.
Everyone wants results immediately today. We don’t let children reflect and develop in their own time. There is so little time for reflection for children today. There’s a certain discipline in learning things by rote, especially if they are beautiful. It’s a form of meditation. I learned so much from Suprabatham. Also, I had a brilliant Sanskrit teacher Mr. Vidvaan Alasingara Bhatrachar.
This time to reflect? How important is it?
There is a discipline with learning these languages and memorizing verses. It’s sharpened my memory skills. If I can find a rhythm in anything, I can remember it. In English I cannot find that rhythm. I can memorize any Sanskrit shloka so easily. In the Sanskrit I studied in my life I remember 80-95 percent of every verse I have ever memorized. These are all parts of my journey. Tamil, Kannada and Sanskrit.
How important to you were these rituals that accompanied your learning?
I see the importance of ritual. On the other hand my brothers have to have rituals. They love them, all the ceremonies and death rituals for my parents and temple visits. They observe a lot of ritual. None of those things have been very important for me. I love them, but they are not important.
Why?
Because I am lazy. Though I believe in them. And being in the US also made a difference.
How did being in the US make a difference to your observance of rituals?
I entered this phase of just dissing everything. Over a period of time and I cant clearly place the time frame I decided that I should recover my faith in these rituals, approximately at the time my father passed away in 1995. I had come back to involve myself in the ceremonies and rituals after his death and I suddenly felt the importance of ritual in my life.
Also my Professor Surinder Bhardwaj who was my guide and is a well-known cultural geographer who specializes in sacred spaces and pilgrimages had given me enough insight into the importance of ritual. I understood from my casual conversations with him that it allows one to incorporate some of the home you left behind into the home you are in now, in the Diaspora. I would have lunch and coffee with him everyday. He is truly a brilliant teacher. You need to understand that I felt energized and you know the great thing about this man is that he told me recently that he felt energized too when he spoke with me. In all my geography education workshops that I conduct, on the second slide, I show is his picture and acknowledge his influence in my becoming a geographer.
I realized that I didn’t have to take up this entire new American persona and could incorporate both my Indian as well as American persona. When I returned to India it was because of my professors influence that I now see certain textures to my life in Bangalore which I had not know before I went to the US.
Would you say your university experience of America has helped you appreciate India more?
Yes, it helped me do this and also overcome my shyness and become bi-cultural.
Your teachers seem to have played an important role in your life. This idea of the guru and shishya or student is a very Brahamanical one isn’t it? From ancient gurukuls or schools?
The idea of the guru is one of the most powerful things that has sustained me. The idea of recognizing peoples presences in my life. My teachers have played an enormous role in my education. Mr. Narasanna in high school gave me a way of looking at the world and how things are interconnected, which was truly amazing. With Mr. Narasanna I never got to tell him how fascinating my life got because of him. I have had to come to grips with this.
Would you say most Indians don’t have this larger view?
I suspect so. Traveling does give you a different perspective. For some it’s art and literature. For me geography opened up my worldview.
You seem to be deeply grateful to your teachers and you mention them often. As a teacher yourself today in India, after these experiences in the US, do you feel fulfilled in your work?
You see, I am doing as best as I can in India. I am not too sure if I can have the same impact though. The impact I have on a student may or may not come back to me. That kind of gratification I can hope for but I think it’s not realistic to expect it. Appreciation for me for my teachers came with the passage of time. With my Sanskrit teacher in high school Mr. Alasingara Bhatrachar, I was able to thank him.
Do you feel this same thanks coming from your students?
One way I feel fulfilled is when I hear this from other people, that I have influenced my students in good ways. To me it is much more powerful when I hear thanks from other people rather than from the students themselves. I have been teaching for more than 25 years now.
Once I received a beautiful letter from an American student for having helped transform his life. One of his friends had contracted HIV from a transfusion and died. Our conversations about cultural geography led him to realize how he could use it to accept his friend’s passing. The letter he wrote me made me cry.
The enablement for teachers and professors in the US is much, much higher than what you get here. In India there are a lot more constraints.
Would you say the "Brahmin value system" of learning, study, discipline and integrity in this process plays an important role in your life?
I identify strongly with people from my background so to speak in several ways. Pramod in Atlanta is an old classmate. From the 8th standard we could both look at the same situation and understand the same points of humor, unlike other classmates. We remember such fine details, which other people miss and still do.
What work did you look for after your B.Sc in India?
I answered an Ad in the Deccan Herald newspaper from the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control after my Bachelors in science and joined them as an Insect Collector. I murdered a lot of insects for Science. I had delusions of becoming a scientist which culminated in a partly traumatic experience where I nearly drowned in Kepannuddhi tank in Bangalore trying to collect the eggs of a certain creature called a shore fly or Brachydeutera longpipes which lays its eggs on dead and decaying organic scum.
I remember this beautiful green carpet of scum on the lake. There were tons of eggs there and I got stuck in the vegetation when my foot went right through the scum and I was stuck and sinking into the muck in bell-bottoms and hawai slippers.
A Little kid named Narasimha pulled me out. He saved me. I was filthy. Disgusting. I somehow saved my slipper and went home and bathed in Shikakai, which is this antibacterial powder, all Brahmins love. No bacteria can withstand that.
I have never trusted a lake since that incident.
Tell me about your story in America. Why did you return to India?
When I graduated with my undergraduate degree, my brother wanted me to do the State Bank of India’s officers exam. I could get a stable job in a bank then. I decided against the exam and was put under great pressure from my family to do it. The ultimate idea of rotting for me was to be in a bank so I went for the exam and sabotaged it and answered c under multiple choices for everything. It was the first time I deliberately flunked an examination, all for America. My father was quite disappointed.
I arrived in America on January 1st, 1982. I went for higher studies. Contrary to the stereotype I wasn’t a very good student. I had what is called a Gandhi second-class grade or any more and I’d have gone into 3rd class, just like in a train in pre independence days. Basically, I had no chance of admission into a college in India.
Pramod, my friend said we needed to go to America. Both of us got admission and my brothers and friends helped me go financially speaking, though I had no financial aid. I went to Ohio university in Athens to study environmental studies and he went to Wichita State. I didn’t get a place in any Indian university. I transferred to Baylor in Waco, Texas eventually. From 1978 to 1982 all I thought of was going to America. It was a big thing. It was all I lived for. After my MS degree from Baylor University I went to Texas A&M and did 1 year of a PhD program there. That didn’t work out. Then, I transferred to Kent State and came under the guidance of Dr. Surinder Bhardwaj who opened my eyes to the joys and thrills of geography.
Tamil Brahmin fathers seem to want their kids to be in stable rather than highly placed jobs. Is that true?
Stability over money. Always.
Where are your parents now?
Both are rather dead.
What idea of America did you have before you went?
I had no idea of America. Whatever ideas I had of the US came from comic books.
Which comics?
Archie and Donald duck comics. I also knew about pizza (pronounced pee-zah) from Archie comics. I thought they tasted like dosa but I was terribly disappointed. Truly so.
I transferred to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the world’s largest southern Baptist university. David Koresh was still a teenager, getting screwed up slowly when one day I discovered that I had eaten beef accidentally. There was no major vomiting like I had often imagined and that was surprising. It was Tex Mex. I began to I love those places. Another trauma was Pepperoni pee-zah. I thought it was pepper slices on the pee-zah so I wolfed it down and it was delicious. I also tried the double cheeseburger. I eventually learned about cholesterol and stopped red meat.
Was the experience all-good or did you have hard times as well?
I experienced a lot of ups and downs. No funding at first and then I managed to get some after working very hard for it.
What sustained you during these times?
Prayer. I don’t think I am that spiritual but I prayed a lot. I have two main legacies from my parents. The first is a Kuttuvilakku oil lamp from my mother and the second is an oval steel plate from my father.
Stability verses risk, adventure and travel? Is that true.
My life is anything but stable. I travel but am not wealthy. There is a still a tussle between these things in my mind.
What is your anchor during changing or stressful times?
Rituals give good anchoring. I learned this from Joseph Campbell, the mythologist. Never underestimate the power of symbols in your life.
A definition of a dark age I heard recently is when symbols lose their meaning. Is that true today for Brahmins in urban India, especially in places like Bangalore?
It’s a valid observation and many people do not have these symbols these days. But there is a dichotomy here that is interesting. In changing times an anchor is important. In Madras I see these people who still retain this sense of identity strongly. Not so much in Bangalore for some reason. My mother’s younger sister’s son. He is one of the most spiritual people I have met. He works for a bank. He has decided not to get married. He has said, “As long as I am alive I will look after my parents. Then I will go to the ashram in Tiruvannamalai once they die.”
Chandra seems deeply moved by this.
Would you say that some Brahmins retreat into these symbols from just the trauma of living in today’s chaotic and fast changing world?
You try to recollect what you have. My parent’s generation was very close to these symbols and they gave me these symbols. Once I set them aside and totally rejected them. But when my father died I began the process of going back to them and they anchored me. These symbols remained within me and I came back from the US with a deeper understanding of them.
I was humbled.
Give me an example of how you involve these Brahamanical symbols in your life?
I teach geography now and these symbols play an important role in my teaching. For example I talk to my students about Pilgrimage. How many of you have gone on one? Temple steps can be symbolic, an inward journey of sorts. I try and impart this idea of an inner journey of sorts, to my students.
I recall a line from that Gandhi film “I’ve traveled so far and wide and all that’s happened is that I’ve come home”. Today I am an American citizen and I can actually say I am comfortable with it. Today I can actually say I love India and America and am comfortable in either place.
A successful merging.
A successful merging.
This comfort you speak of. Has it come after this journey to America?
Absolutely.
You mentioned to me earlier that you don’t go for rituals like your brothers so but that you still feel anchored by these rituals?
My brothers have an issue with me, as I do not go for the annual rituals with them. I do not go with them, as I believe that these rituals are extremely powerful. And I want them performed with a great deal of understanding and the right aesthetic as well.
What rubbish I told my mother. I wont do this. My mother agreed with me. She actually once told me about her daughters-in-law. She said that hey refused to move with the times. She said “They’re drowning in tradition”. She was a liberal woman, my mother.
These traditions and their meaningfulness, Do you think it will survive current changes in India?
I am not pessimistic. There is a certain motivation for some people to recover their symbols of their past. And these symbols have endured. Though for me, it’s very private. It’s always a struggle to keep ones identity in the larger milieu of things. I don’t think I have a sense of being beleaguered. We adapt. It’s not been a choice. We have just had to. We will in the future also. We will endure. However, we need to hold onto the Tamil language and fight the Hindi hegemony.
Tell me about the so called “strident anti Brahmin” voice. How does the Brahmin respond?
We don’t respond. We move on and adapt. And I am glad theirs no loud reply. But many of us have a deep underlying anger. Very deep. But I have personally never felt angry; as I have never had to face the kinds of things some of these people talk about. Before I went to the US I would not talk to people based on certain things. I wouldn’t talk to people if they were smoking. And I was painfully shy. America changed all that. I had to survive, I had to teach and so I left it all behind.
Reservation kept many of us away from education in India. We went to the US and learned so much more. So much more.
Reservation kept many of us away from education in India. We went to the US and learned so much more. So much more.
Why did you come back to India?
I got a job at North Dakota State University in Fargo. Initially I was thrilled but after a year I felt the place was quite boring. I finished my PhD in 1993; and in 1995 my father died. In 1996 my mother passed away.I returned Bangalore in 1998 for 8 months on a senior research fellowship and fell in love with Bangalore and then also felt extreme hatred for Fargo. I returned to India in 2000 and found that geography education is pathetic in India and was in need of a kick in the ass. I started an initiative under The Dharani Trust called “The Indian Institute of Geographical Studies. I also teach at the Bangalore International School.
Two days later I climb the stairs to the roof of Chandra’s apartment building to take some photographs. It’s located close to Johnson market, a predominately Muslim area and his apartment is located behind the local mosque.
Does the mullah calling disturb you?
Well, some of them yell it out violently but there is this one young fellow who does it melodiously. I don’t mind him.
Chandra is moved, as was Suchindranath by the telling of his story. It’s a powerful thing, to tell your own story, he says. Crows circle Chandra and he tells me that they want to get fed, as Brahmins put food out for the crows, which they believe, are the spirits of their ancestors.
Chandra looks down at an empty ground next to the apartment and tells me that they slaughter goats there. He says so with apparent distaste. After I take come photographs we go down to his apartment, which is spartan, utilitarian and slightly messy. It overlooks a crowded section of houses. One wall contains a work desk with a TV on it with mixers for making chutneys lying beneath it. It lies right next to a pooja table with the metal oil lamp his mother gave him placed on it. Beneath the table is another lamp and I think that it is a ship’s lantern. I ask.It’s a railway signal lamp, says Chandra.
So are you interested in trains?
I went though a phase where I wanted to be an engine driver for the Brindavan express between Bangalore and Madras. Even now if I could get a chance I would love to be an engine driver. Not as a career but to just ride one. Mr. Pacheco was a really good engine driver, an old man with elephantiasis. He was a very senior engine driver and when I was a child he would let me up in the engine and show me how to use it. The throttle would go up 8 notches and he would change notches by the colour of the smoke. I loved traveling by train.
From where to where would you travel by train?
As a child, every Saturday my uncle and I would take the Bangalore to Madras express to Jolarapettai. We would eat vadai at Jolarapettai and take the Brindavan express to Bangalore. Very often we would return to Bangalore with Mr. Pacheco. I would sit with him and he would let me pull the whistle cord as well. When we saw the rear guard compartment pass out of reach we would give a really long blast.
In India we can keep the door open whereas abroad we could not do that. How beautiful is that. I love to stand at the door in a train, with it wide open. We would visit my grandparents in Tiruchchi and take the steam train there. We would reach Kullithalay at 6 am in the morning and wait for another train to pass. People would cross the tracks and eat breakfast and would also get vibuthi for their forehead. Then they would eat hot idlis, pongal and coffee. Then when the train re-started I would stand at the door, switching between each side of the train, between each open door. On either side of the track we would have alternating rice paddies and banana plantations. There was a gentle early morning breeze and the green was pure and bright.
It was about two furlongs from my grandmother’s house to the Cauvery river. As soon as we reached we would drop whatever we were carrying and run towards the river after grabbing a towel and soap. We would run barefoot, cross the railway tracks, the highway, scramble up the levee and slide down the other side into the river. We would swim for about an hour and then head back starving to the house where we would eat and sleep deeply. After all this we still had coal in our hair from that train. Later on when I read “Malgudi Days,” those wonderful stories from R.K Narayan about life within the village, I realized that this was the village those stories came from.
I never want to visit the UK you know.
Why?
I have an idea of the UK from P.G Wodehouse, which I do not want to ruin. I do not want to change this idea of Malgudi also.
This idea of childhood seems to give you great peace and joy.
Not entirely true. We also had traumas but the thought of the train journey sustains me. When stressed, these thoughts’ of steam trains’ and those early mornings give me a sense of romance, adventure and peace.
On the pooja table, the lamp Chandra’s mother left him stands next to a tiny statue of the elephant headed Lord Ganesha. The little idol is wearing a dhoti and suit jacket, the official garb of the Mysore State government servant at one time... though not anymore.
Thank you Chandra Shekhar Balachandran for allowing me to take this interview and for the usage of your photographs. Thank you Ashok Krishnan for taking the time to discuss symbology, Joseph Campbell and many other things with me, which helped greatly in my interviewing here.
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