Whatshot
The Shree Mariammen Temple in Mount Edgecombe
The Shree Mariammen Temple in Mount Edgecombe
Date: 2024-08-29
They were not amateurs but believers....They did not have to psych themselves up to play their roles...They believed in the sacredness of the text...while I searched for some sense of loss...I was polluting the afternoon with doubt and with the patronage of admiration. I misread the event through a visual echo of History - the cane fields, indenture, the evocation of vanished armies, temples and trumpeting elephants - when all around me there was quite the opposite - a delight of conviction, not loss (Derek Walcott).
Friday 9thAugust. The priest gestured for me to come closer, offering me an armful of fruit. He smeared purple ash on my forehead and gently blessed me. I was transported, India, incense, chanting, bells, gods and goddesses. But this was Durban, the Shree Mariammen Temple in Mount Edgecombe, a towering golden edifice, filled with ancient trees holding the history of ancient beliefs. How appropriate that we should be at the temple of a mighty Goddess. A Goddess at once powerful and gentle.
I circled the temple three times, following in the steps of a ritual stretching back thousands of years. It was a balmy, morning in Durban. I had company. Monkeys were eyeing my fruit. Their timing was prefect. They darted in and out to snatch some breakfast at exactly the time devotees bowed their heads in prayer.
As the temple auntie said prayers, she held my arm and we rotated the lamp three times to the Goddess, she gently whispered what I should do next. I knelt, pressing my forehead to the earth and prayed. Layers upon layers of history, rituals handed down through the generations. A culture which refused to bow to the regime. Indentured labourers reduced to numbers, cogs in a machine. History beckoned. Time slowed to a standstill.
I was here to commemorate the life of Dr Goonam, who now has a statue in the temple grounds. As I listened to the speeches, I got to know a woman who dedicated her life to healing the sick and confronting oppression. It was not all serious. People chuckled as her daughter regaled us with stories of her driving a a left-hand drive red Alfa Romeo through the throngs of Durban's casbah.
But somehow, the Goddess drew me back in. What is it about devotion that suspends all around you and moves you in ways that are impossible to grasp or explain. In a world of technological leaps and enveloping robotics, the Goddess looms more potent than anything humankind could ever contemplate.
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