Kanyakumari is the southernmost tip of mainland India (where 3 oceans meet). Apparently if you come here at the right time you can see the sun set, and the moon rise at the same time – a pretty romantic, mystical place in theory (but a lot of India is like that). Of course, since Kanyukamari is naturally endowed with the beauty of a double sun/moon rise, Saints, and religiously fevered people have already, and continuously lay claim to, and extrapolate on it’s wonder (especially at sun set and sun rise) even in the off season when there is nothing naturally spectacular to see.

Probably the most famous saint to visit Kanyakumari (and a further reason for religious pilgrims to come) is Vivekanda. I wanted to find out who this guy was, so we visited an ashram in his memory. Inside was a “picture museum”. It was sort of like walking through a big picture book (with plenty of large print text) housed in a building.

It seemed like a waste of space (when it really could have been just a picture book), but I think the fact that we had to stand and walk through the space made us read everything. The museum created a setting for the story of Vivekanda with a basic history of Indian religion. Various sects arose, and various folks who were pure came along to combat corruption as it arose. I think the purpose of the brief religious history lesson was to show Vivekanda’s place in it. Vivekanda lived in the 18^th century. He was (not surprisingly) a Brhamin by birth. He studied under a swamy who I understood through the writing to be eccentric, and also full of joy. Vivekanda was obsessed with enlightenment. It seemed that the most important lesson he learned from the swamy was to think of others before himself. What Vivekanda learned was that his obsession with enlightenment was kind of egocentric, and was preventing him from achieving it. The old enlightenment catch 22. Vivekanda’s reaction to this realization was a big trip all over India doing charity work, and studying the lives of common people. He ended his India trip at it’s Southern tip, Kanyakumari, and decided to swim to a rock just South of it (to make sure he was really at the tip) to meditate. The picture museum describes him jumping into shark-infested waters, but I think they were just trying to make it sound heroic. The rock isn’t very far (I don’t know if it’s moved since 1980 or so), but I’d swim to it if I was allowed to. Anyways, Vivekanda meditated out there for 3 days. When he came back from the rock, he decided that his next mission would be to spread the word of Indian spirituality throughout the world. He went to America and England. The illustrations for this period are rave newspaper reviews of his speeches at conferences in London, Boston, NewYork…..as well as pictures of some of his Western followers who came back with him from America in 1890! Three young women, and one young man…(Victorian hippies in black and white).

The photos of the historic hippies mark the beginning of where the story gets completely ridiculous. Vivekanda predicts that something VERY bad will happen in Europe UNLESS it embraces religion. This is the late 19^th century. All of a sudden the pictures skip 60 years to images of the Vietnam war juxtaposed with images of extreme back to the lander hippies (a cute blond family with dreads, half naked, very dirty and living in a hut). I’m not sure how the Vietnam war (which had American involvement and not European), as well as hippies relate to the doomsday of Europe’s spirituality, but it was non-the-less entertaining. If they had perhaps skipped to images of World war one, or even world war 2 (which were closer to Vivekanda’s prediction, and atleast involved Europe) it wouldn’t have been much more creditable, but it would have been less entertaining.

Vivekanda’s message to India was to take action, to take control of their lives, and to build their country. He thought that Indian’s could learn productivity from “the west”, and the West could learn about deep spirituality, and lack of consumerism from India. Probably not a bad idea in general. I can see how Indian’s want to connect hippies to Vivekanda. He reached out to America with spirituality, before America embraced it on a large scale. Vivekanda’s  quotations (from a man of action) are excessively patriotic, and seem charged with youthful energy. His disciples run many programs for youth programs, and development projects in India under his name. He seems to fill the role of the practical saint, for the most part choosing action over contemplation. To me, this seems to contrast with many religious leaders in India.

At Vivekanda’s ashram is a garden museum of ideas for sustainable living. Among other things there was a model for irrigation using rainwater, and a bunch of little house models you could walk through made entirely of recycled materials. Nothing was well maintained, and I didn’t get the sense that any of the ideas were actually being implemented, but it was cool to look at. It definitely had a 60’s hippie vibe. An odd contrast to this little museum was my plastic water bottle. I had been carrying around an old plastic water bottle for days because I couldn’t find anywhere to recycle it. I had re-used it many times, and it was getting to the point of being grimy and stinky (not nice to refill). I was already using another one, but I didn’t want to throw the old one out. After seeing the garden of pretty little houses made of trash, and thinking about all the trash that isn’t even recycled in India because the government doesn’t care enough about the people to make the infrastructure accessible I decided that it was my spiritual mission to recycle my water bottle. I am very sad to say that I failed miserably at my spiritual mission, and left it on a table in a restaurant the next day.

A note on recycling in India. There IS recycling in Chennai (and probably all the other big cities). It took me awhile to figure out how it works. Basically everyone throws all their trash in one bin. Then garbage pickers (the poorest looking people) pick out the recyclables and bring them to a depot. When I realized they were picking out ONLY recyclables I watched where they were going. The depots are counters that open onto the street. The people working at the depots are the only ones “inside” so I could see the whole process from the street. I saw that the stuff was getting weighed, and the people delivering the trash were making money off of it. Once I figured out what a recycling depot looked like I dropped off the recycling myself. I know that my trash is money poor people could have made, but I couldn’t stand to think of anyone picking through my garbage because I’m too lazy to sort it. If I saw a garbage picker before I got to the depot I gave my pre-sorted recycling to them. They were always pretty happy with it.

After the Vivikanda museum we took a small ferry across the “shark invested waters” (with about 100 Indians) to the island where Vivikanda sat. We waited about 30 minutes in a claustrophobic tunnel (I think made to control the long lines of pilgrims). This small Island at the tip of India is very important to many Indian’s. I don’t think the tunnel was claustraphobic for them, but to one Canadian, and one American from Denver it was a little stuffy. To top it off we were being harassed by drunk young men at one point (in a tiny little tunnel), but fortunately a sober older man came to our rescue. Not every one who visits the Island is a humble pilgrim. It is also just a “heritage site” for the common tourist. In the end the ferry trip wasn’t really worth it. I think it was a little different a century and a half ago with just Vivikanda out there by himself.