Reminiscences of sister Kotha
By her youngest brother Sunthar
[Corrected, revised, and completed version of the original posted by Leila on 21 Jan 2014]
Daring Pioneer
My earliest memory of sister Thurai (Kothai Nayagi Ammal) is from beneath the tall mango tree in the garden of our extensive walled bungalow at Club Road when I was about five years old. Sporting a Girl Guide uniform, the tomboy and an increasingly intimidated Indian male of about her own age (probably our cousin on the maternal side, Lingam) were fencing with drawn daggers (perhaps a wavy Malay keris). All the while, she was singing “I won’t let you go!” (unnai vida maatten) from the 1956 Tamil remake of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. This image has molded, and been reinforced by, subsequent impressions left by her intermittent visits from Penang.
I learned after her demise, through the vivid reminiscence of her younger sister Chelva, of how she had driven the 230 miles to visit our parents in Kuala Lumpur (KL) alone on a Honda Cub (economy scooter with limited horsepower meant only for intra-city commuting), stopping at Serendah along her way to spend time with the latter. A teenage Indian girl riding a scooter was unheard of even during the time of her youngest sister Rani, who became likewise notorious during her university years for doing the same (with me sometimes clinging on to the backseat).
A Girl Guide leader at 16, Kotha went on to become an Air Ranger leader and ended up marrying a Boy Scout leader. For her wedding, the walkway up to the church and the aisles were lined with guides and scouts standing at attention on opposite sides to welcome the guests. Though I did not have the privilege of growing up with her and largely because of this, no one more incarnated the daring, unconventional, and pioneering streak in our family that was often a source of consternation to our Ceylonese Tamil community in Malaysia. Her courageous example has no doubt, at least unconsciously, facilitated similar radical choices taken long after by her younger siblings, including me.
Befriending the underworld
Kotha had left when I was only three years old for Penang Island in the northwest of the country to study nursing. On her earliest visit back to our Club Road home that I can still recall, she brought a wicker basket containing a python that intrigued me to no end. She would encourage me to play with it and let it kiss my cheeks with its ticklish forked tongue. Our mother, on the contrary, used to be so terrified that she would not even venture into the room. Every other day Kotha would leave a live chicken in the basket that would go strangely quiet. When opened a few hours later, the hapless bird would have flown; instead there would be a mysterious bulge moving slowly down from the head towards the tail of the serpent. (This was long before I would throw budding magician Andrew into tantrums by immediately explaining each of his 'magic' tricks to a credulous audience.)
Dangerous contraband
The story I've been boasting the most about her to everyone is the one she recounted on that visit. Because Penang Island was a free port, visitors arriving by ferry at Butterworth on the mainland side were subject to customs inspections. People used to try and smuggle in items that were significantly more expensive in other cities such as the capital Kuala Lumpur (KL), where we lived. Suspecting undeclared cosmetics, the officer had insisted that she reveal what was in the basket. When he refused to believe she was only carrying a snake, she told him to open it himself. After what might have been the shock of his life, the customs always wa(i)ved her through rather than risk rummaging through her affairs. Since then Kotha has always been associated for me with the mystery of snakes and adventures in foreign islands, eventually the unknown Australia.
Nursing God's creatures
During the long primary school holidays, my mother would always take me along to visit my elder siblings 200 miles away either south in Singapore (eldest brother Panchalingam) or north in Butterworth (where married sisters Rasathi and Chelva used to live). While staying in Butterworth, we would ferry across to visit Kotha in Penang and sometimes stay with her as well. On the only occasion I still remember vividly, nurse Kotha had gone on her rounds leaving us alone. Our mother, who had been increasingly intrigued by a large wooden crate clearly marked DANGER on all sides, finally took it upon herself to pry it upon. Immediately, a couple of (harmless) grass snakes slithered out all over the floor. Terrified, she dragged me out of the apartment and, despite Kotha's protestations, we were back in Butterworth the same afternoon. Whereas most unmarried girls receive flowers, perfumes, ornaments, etc., on their birthdays, Kotha's friends used to give her snakes as (unreturnable) gifts. At least that was what she claimed, for in retrospect she may have gotten them herself and was simply trying to placate mother. Nevertheless, this confirms that my earliest childhood perceptions of my elder sister’s transgressive proclivities were shared by her peers.
Adam and Eve?
When I was around six, my father retired from government service and the family moved to a smaller house beside the country's main (Sinhala) Buddhist temple in the well-known Tamil locality of Brickfields. On the wall of our living room there hung a proudly framed photo of the reception meal after Kotha's wedding that visitors would gaze at with wonder and disbelief. For the bride was cradling the head of a grown python while her British groom was gingerly holding on to its tail and her tearful mother remained seated beside, unable to flee such a happy and auspicious ceremony. Though highly unlikely that the Asian reporters were aware of its Biblical implications, the unique story and photo opportunity captured headlines even in the national newspapers.
Extending the clan
Father had adamantly opposed her love-marriage, despite the RAAF officer having come down to KL to request her hand. All marriages were arranged within our community according to some arcane pecking order that I have still not taken the trouble to figure out. Her betrothal to an unknown foreigner risked ostracism for the entire family. Kotha made it clear however that, permission or no, she was going to marry Peter. So at the eleventh hour, father underwent a sudden conversion: we all ended up in Penang to celebrate the wedding together. Such was the uproar that Kotha was no longer able to visit her closest elder sister Rasathi, who had undergone an arranged marriage and whose husband continued to lecture me for years afterwards how I was the only unspoiled fruit of her family. Though I have seen Pete but rarely and still do not know him well enough, he has remained my favorite brother-in-law because Kotha always seemed the happiest in her marriage.
Cutting the umbilical cord
Her courage in breaking out a yet unbeaten trail perhaps facilitated her younger sister Mahes likewise deciding to marry a Britisher. In my case, I wrote father from Madras, immediately upon arriving in India, that I would never marry within my community. He wrote back that I could marry whomever I wished and received Elizabeth with much affection from her very first visit. As for the by now over eighteen foot Malayan python that had immigrated to Australia with the couple, Kotha eventually gave it over for adoption to the zoo. It had affectionately wound itself around her one day and like a stubborn kid refused to unwind. So it was time to cut the apron strings and for it to be on its own.
Exotic birthday gifts
Because Kotha seemed the most foreign in our family and Pete was the first European I knew, I always enjoyed their visits to our parents, with whom I lived throughout in KL. Even more so, she would invariably bring exotic gifts, especially when it was my birthday. Once it was a boomerang, another time it was a wooden ruler with rare genres of Australian wood embedded across its length. As the youngest and spoilt child of the family, I always expected to get what I wanted. Once, I was more than sulky at a birthday gift and was roundly scolded, for Kotha would have none of my mother's routine indulgence. But the richly illustrated book on fauna Down Under left a lasting realization that there were marsupials and other creatures, such as cuddly koala bears, boxing kangaroos, and egg-laying platypuses that were literally out of my world.
Curiosities Down Under
Though I have yet to set foot on her continent, the awakened fascination for the strange and the distant has no doubt grown into the lifelong and ongoing study of exotic peoples and customs, including the unexplored and forbidden aspects of ourselves (the Biblical snake). After all, I ended up marrying a (French) anthropologist for whom Indians remain curiosities. She has no doubt had an even more ‘magical’ effect on her second son, Andrew, who has stayed in India for long periods engaged in unusual pursuits, accompanied by a snake and a monkey. Whenever he was with us at the Banaras Hindu University campus, the kids in the neighborhood would keep banging our door to see the traveling zoo and be treated to magic shows. More recently in 2009, when her youngest sister Rani was visiting Australia from UK, 71-year old Kotha could be seen cavorting with Andrew's formidable python. As its head darts towards her face, she can be heard reminding Olive that "I'm not your food!" Indeed, human offspring too often devour their parents, emotionally and psychologically, without realizing it until the latter are no longer around to make amends.
Discovery of India
Kotha played a significant though far from exclusive role in awakening my interest in Hindu spirituality. She would speak of Paul Brunton's Search in Secret India, which whets the reader's appetite for the mysteries of Banaras, and Arthur Osborne on Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge, both of whom I subsequently took the trouble to read. I went on to follow other such inner adventures, such as Paramahamsa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Upon arriving in Madras in early 1972, among the first places I stayed at on my pilgrimage circuit was the Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai. I returned there a couple more times to imbibe the inner peace left by the Sage of Arunachala during my long stay in India. I was the first among my siblings to actually go to India, and Kotha was the first to visit me in Banaras (1973?). She came with an Australian friend named Michelle, who was constantly amazed by everything they saw (especially male students strolling around the BHU campus holding hands). My elder brother Rasa, a ‘transgressive ascetic’ if there ever was one such in Malaysia, also visited me (1975-76), eventually made Tiruvannamalai his home, and finally passed away there. Though our relationship, once extremely close, had become increasingly difficult, even antagonistic, largely due to (over-) proximity, Kotha, who also visited the Ashram there, maintained close, regular, and cordial contacts with Rasa and his partner.
"Where is Sunthar?"
[pending]
Field Trips
Kotha had gotten to know Elizabeth on the latter’s first trip to KL after our marriage in Banaras, and was again the first family member to visit us there afterwards. She even accompanied us on a field trip to Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for Elizabeth's PhD research on the popular deity Bhairava. Dr. Kamlesh Dutta Tripathi, who had been helping her translate Sanskrit manuscripts at BHU, was by then Director of the Kalidas Akademi in Ujjain (MP). He received us graciously in a comfortable hotel, where we were invited by complete strangers to witness a colorful Hindu wedding happening there with the bridegroom arriving amidst much fanfare on horseback like a prince. When we came out after worshipping at a goddess temple, my brand new shoes had disappeared. Complaining was interpreted by the offended devotees around as accusing the deity of theft. In such ways, Kotha gained various insights into Indian culture, religion, and mentality through her youngest brother, conversant in Hindi. Her innate curiosity about foreign lands, people unlike herself, and unusual objects, was more apparent than ever.
Enjoying Indian hospitality
At the end of her stay, we could not accompany her onwards to Puri (Orissa). Having sought out her assigned second-class compartment at the train station, I told her fellow travelers that my sister here was new to the country and to look out for her as she did not speak Hindi. Her next letter related how these most ordinary Indians had attended to her needs to the extent of sharing their food throughout the journey with a perfect stranger. Later, back in Australia, when she wrote her first book to accompany the classes she was giving at her store, this anecdote and my role in it received pride of place.
Handicrafts enterprise
After her initial visit to India, Kotha was toying with the idea of importing handicrafts for resale starting with saris. As I was a poor Sanskrit student still dependent on modest stipends from home, I offered to be her agent on commission. So I invested all my savings and more in a commercial sampling of fine Banaras silk saris from a trusted merchant that I shipped to Newcastle to launch my part time but short-lived business venture. For some weeks later I received an official notice from the customs at Calcutta requesting documents that I had never heard of under threat of confiscation. At a complete loss, I was taken by Douglas McKeehan, an American musician friend to his Indian businessman acquaintance, who in turn took us to a wealthy exporter of local handicrafts Mr. Chandra Prakash. The latter had been featured in LIFE magazine as the first Indian to sell saris in the USA. He recalled with fondness his days in Brickfields (KL), where he had known Ceylon Tamil community leaders like Sami Arumugam. After scaring me with many theatrics of my imminent arrest for fraud, he took personal responsibility for the shipment. Before long, Kotha and family were his regular guests in Banaras, where Elizabeth got to meet her daughter Leila.
Serpent Power
Only in India did I become fully aware of the sacredness of the snake. The supreme ascetic Śiva wears writhing serpents as ornaments and even his benign royal counterpart Viṣṇu reclines comfortably on the many-headed and endless Ananta. During Naga Panchami Hindus worship even cobras and leave offerings of milk, etc., at the mouth of their pits. During the rains, the season of snakebites, they emerged in great numbers from the flooded fields of the BHU campus and were sometimes inadvertently crushed or mercilessly beaten as they crossed the road. In late 1976, undergoing great psychological turmoil, I was debating with myself whether to abandon my Master's course in Sanskrit and retire to a certain ashram in Tiruvannamalai. I suddenly witnessed a snake, just outside the hostel room window, pounce upon a large frog but unable to swallow or to let go. It was as if my writhing sense of self had suddenly fallen prey to an irresistible primordial force that had uncoiled from within. Already as a kid in Brickfields, the footpath shortcut from our home to the Vivekananda Ashram used to take me uneasily past a hollowed tree stump that received constant offerings from the surrounding quarters of the Tamil laborers serving the municipality. Feared, mythologized, propitiated, or slain by the rest of us, the serpent for Kotha was a natural, intimate, and lifelong friend.
Friends for a Season
When Mr. Prakash discovered at our first meeting that I had come to Banaras to study Sanskrit, but had just skipped my M.A. exams due to disillusionment with the content and conduct of the courses at BHU, he insisted on my studying with his white-bearded neighbor Darśana-Kesari Gopal Shastri Tripathi, a foremost grammarian among the traditional scholars of the holy city. The latter eventually introduced me to his and now my spiritual Guru, Ācārya Rameshwar Jha, with whom I read the texts of Kashmiri Shaivism. Even after we had quit India permanently in March-April 1989 and I lost touch with everyone in India, Kotha and Pete maintained regular contacts with the Prakash family. She had opened a handicrafts shop in the Mayfield suburb of Newcastle and was by now traveling all over South East Asia in search of greater diversity, even up to Japan. The make-even business, she explained, was mainly a support and excuse to travel and discover the world. When Elizabeth and I revisited India for the first time after more than 24 years in July-August 2013, we made an attempt to locate his old home near the Rathayatra Crossing in Banaras. Unfortunately, the family seems to have dispersed completely and no one around could recall his name. When sister Rani and I skyped Kotha on Dec. 15 during my brief visit to her at Chesterfield (UK), this was one of our topics of discussion. Especially, as Rani had also stayed subsequently with Mr. Prakash and family when she visited and got to meet Elizabeth on the way back from KL to the UK. Though I took her to meet Rameshwar Jha (for darśan), there is no recollection of having done the same with Kotha nor why not.
Color Blind
On her second visit, alone this time, I was innocently describing, perhaps in the presence of a local friend, how we siblings seemed to be divided into two 'lineages': those taking after my mother's fair complexion (inherited from her own mother, who was called "Peach-Amma"), among whom I counted myself, and those inheriting my father's dark side, which implicitly included my sister. Informed no doubt by her own experiences in white Australia, Kotha at once chided me for the potentially 'racist' repercussions of such speculation (which anyone who reads the matrimonial columns of an Indian newspaper or has been studying the aggressive marketing and booming sales of skin-lightening creams across Asia would be surely aware of...). The highest Hindu (Upanishadic) wisdom views the "whole world as family" (vasudhaiva kutumbakam) and the complexities of color perception across this extended clan became much clearer to me after meeting Elizabeth, who confessed being attracted to this Indian because he was brown!
Family therapist
[pending]
Marriage Counselor
Wholly different personalities, Elizabeth and I had been bickering all the time before we got married and continued to do so long after. Sitting between us on a cycle-rickshaw, during her third visit in Banaras, Kotha asked: "why did you get married, if you can't agree on anything?" She then observed that we were indeed lucky to enjoy the luxury of quarreling over such trifling matters, when so many others are stuck with insurmountable barriers. While visiting a local fair in Rajasthan, Elizabeth was taken in by a pair of silver anklets. Having had little exposure to the opposite sex, except for my ever indulgent sisters, I was very self-centered, lost in my intellectual questions and pursuits. Kotha obliged me to not only buy the anklets but also tie them around my wife's happy feet.
Reunions in Malaysia
Our family has been long since intermarried and dispersed across the world. The most convenient way to get together was to meet in KL to celebrate my father’s birthday, on June 23, which happens to be the day before my own birthday. (My mother had long since passed away and my first trip back to KL from Banaras was to be at her side when she was in a semi-coma after having undergone a debilitating stroke that left her unable to speak.) This is how Elizabeth and Kotha met the first time and got to know each other, before the latter visited us in Banaras. Father subsequently met with an accident followed by a stroke and had to be moved to stay with his daughter Chelva in Johor Bahru (gateway to the sovereign island of Singapore).
Endurance
On our last visit in 1998, we took a short vacation with my Singapore niece Meera and family to scenic Tioman Island off the east coast of Pahang state. While we were having a good time snorkeling, etc., Kotha and Pete came there from Australia. Immediately upon arrival unfortunately, while wading out to join us in the shallow waters, Kotha stepped on the poisonous thorns of a hidden sea urchin. Agonizing with pain as attempts were made to extract the long brittle and deeply set thorns and the wounds cauterized with fire, Kotha bore the ordeal with impressive courage. While undergoing prolonged treatment for the resulting inflammation and after everyone had to return to their respective hometowns and countries, she remained in Johor Bahru to look after our father, who passed away shortly thereafter.
Reckless for others
For all her nonconformist individuality, Kotha was dedicated to the welfare of others, which is why she chose to train as a nurse in the first place and continued to volunteer at the hospital in Newcastle, where she herself eventually underwent treatment for cancer at minimal cost in recognition of all the servces trendered. Kotha's younger sister recalls how the teen girl guide from Penang, while visiting our parents in KL, immediately disappeared upon noticing billowing smoke some distance away and returned dead tired to fall immediately asleep only three days later. Whereas some are foolhardy only in the pursuit of self-interest and some are caring while sober, Kotha was reckless for others. Even when fighting to prolong her life, she often seemed more concerned about those sharing her ward as relatives have amply reported. No surprise then that she has been nominated for Citizen of the Year 2013 at Port Stephens.
Interreligious Dialogue
Visiting parents in Brickfields from Australia was also a way of renewing with her roots and exposing her husband and children to her inherited tradition. We watched non-subtitled Tamil mythological films together at the local Lido cinema, translating the dialogues for Peter sitting between us. I can still see her emerging from the movie-theater after having experienced the grand finale: the heroic sacrifice of the magnanimous but doomed Karṇa in the epic battle of the Mahābhārata. While Kotha had been moved to tears, like many of her fellow Tamil spectators, Peter indignantly kept calling the scheming Krishna a “fink” for having engineered the mortal’s death. Witnessing later, as an adult from America, the ‘Hindu’ eggs being hurled at University of Chicago prima donna, Prof. Wendy Doniger, for accusing Lord Krishna of the even greater crime of “genocide,” it was hence obvious that she was expressing the gut-reaction of a (secularized) Christian sensibility (and not simply being malicious). In her (partial) defense, I even referred to this childhood incident in the context of the ongoing “War on Terror” (September 2001).
Tamil Culture
Kotha spoke Tamil fluently and seemed to perceive marked affinities to Japanese that she had been obliged to learn at school during the WWII occupation of Malaya. She discovered, prepared, and enjoyed a variety of other cuisines, while retaining her South Indian tastes, and was good at demonstrating to others the finer points of making “exotic” fare, like our childhood doṣas. Despite breaking away so early in life from age-old but restrictive traditions, Kotha’s deep attachment till the very end to her maternal language and culture, is amply attested by many tributes from the Newcastle Tamil Sangam of which they were Executive Committee members for three decades. Peter had been its President from 1996–97 and Kotha from 1999–2000. While her siblings, especially I, often referred to her as “our Australian sister,” Indian students just setting foot on that unknown continent and starting a family there seem to be remembering her instead as their Tamil godmother.
Exemplary Seven
As a Five (with a Four wing), the most introverted among the Enneagram types, I seem to get along best with productive collaborators and intimate friends, who are type Seven, the most extroverted of the nine types. Kotha exemplified the best traits of a Seven: curious about the world, appreciative of life, cultivating multiple talents, loyal to her friends, respectful of the liberty of others, and attentive to their needs. Though brimming with fascinating adventures to recount, she knew when and how to listen and learn from her interlocutors. Yesterday, our last full day at Los Angeles, we visited the beautiful Lake Shrine of the Self-Realization Fellowship, starting with the Indian handicraft shop and museum dedicated to the Christ-like mission of Paramahamsa Yogananda (himself an avid collector and probably a beatific type Seven…). While scrutinizing each object, we could picture Kotha with us, as in India, commenting with wonder at these intricate fusions of art and spirituality. She herself experimented with the creative arts and Elizabeth still treasures her gifts from India: a copper tooling and a necklace bearing a precious agate stone.
Unlike Indian parents intent on molding offspring in their own image (as doctors, engineers, lawyers...even into saints!) or Americans relieved to see them abandon the nest, Kotha struck a fine balance between encouraging her kids to make their own choices and providing sage if sometimes stern counsel. I still recall her conversing in KL with her younger son “Andrew Elliott” (as she used to address him at these moments), though still a boy, as if he were already an adult. Having broken so many taboos herself since childhood, she did not seem unduly concerned with him training to be a chef in Delhi and going on to become an itinerant magician. She likewise believed in others, especially her children, being free to choose their faith (or none). It was a joy to have her accompany us on our travels in India, for she was so adaptable, genuinely interested in others, appreciative of everything around. When she first visited me in Banaras, I mused citing the Bhagavad Gita (VI.42) that we siblings, given our wholly disparate yet forceful characters, must be an idiosyncratic bunch of “fallen yogis” reborn into the same family: she readily agreed!
Kothainayaki, the original
Perceptive in-laws and friends, who have gotten to know Kotha posthumously only through these reminiscences, have readily recognized the act of absolute liberty that launched her existence and the emancipatory touch of the serpent’s embrace. Remarking on our family resemblance, they are moved to celebrate and grieve this close bond with her youngest brother. The truth, however, is that I have been far more conscious of my elder brother and other sisters, in whose shadow I grew up in Malaysia. The human ‘individual’ is constituted through successive overlays of what might properly be called (ontological) plagiarism raised to such a fine art of self-deception that we eventually lose sight of what is owed to our predecessors. Formative influences are also received refracted through more proximate intermediaries who, while amplifying their effects, serve to obscure the since alienated original source. It is only in the process of piecing together these scattered anecdotes and impressions into (the semblance of) a coherent narrative, occasioned precisely by her permanent exit from our stage, that I myself realize more fully what is already so obvious even to total strangers. As the youngest, I have had the privilege of closely observing and interacting with my elder siblings to appropriate what seemed the best qualities of each. But I have remained clueless as to who could have inspired Kotha’s decisive break with constricting tradition or, rather, her celebration of the freedom hidden in its heart. That is until I recalled just a couple of days ago that our devout mother, no doubt in a moment of premonition, had named her after a popular writer, who was likewise a pioneer. Handed over at “sweet sixteen” to our father as his second marriage, mother, who spoke only broken English, was an avid reader of Tamil romances and great admirer of the original Kothainayaki Ammal.
Freedom
Fittingly enough, I discovered the ultimate source of her autonomy in Banaras, sacred heart of Hindu tradition, from a most orthodox and learned brahmin guru, who immediately recognized what remained obscured in me. Kothai's original namesake was Vaiṣṇava child-saint Āṇḍāl, which might perhaps justify Elizabeth's apotheosis, when we received the news in Los Angeles, of her benign sister-in-law into "an angel on earth." Hindus are typically named after a divinity, whose qualities they are no doubt expected to gradually manifest. Like our 'self-made' (svayambhū) father, who came with nothing from Ceylon to sow the seeds on Malayan soil of a 'uinversal' Visuvalingam (viśva-liṅgam) clan that now extends across our shrinking globe, all the males in the family are (one or other) Lingam, non-anthropomorphic icon of (Śiva as supreme) God. True freedom is not that of the uncaged predator but the dissolution of all these inherited overlays that by inflating the plagiarized ego have hidden the one and only Self. Kotha’s life of caring and service exemplifies this pristine liberty.
Sunthar (Los Angeles, 21-26 Jan 2014)
Chicago, USA
