Sound Touch Taste


Smell Sight


5 Forms of Grace in Southern India


ORIGIN COLUMNIST Susanna Harwood Rubin


Chennai Street SOUND


merging into a symphonic roar that filtered up from the distant street through the still- dark windows and their drab curtains. In my time-zone-traversing state of delirium, fuelled by anticipation and the memory of the watery espresso consumed half a day ago in the Brussels airport, I created some operatic association. Chennai was far from the Met and a performance I had seen just a week ago, but there it was – an equally complex soundscape, carefully constructed of pieces and parts, sections and moments. Small metallic percussive construction sounds and persistent growls of machinery were


T ornamented by dogs barking and


people’s voices calling to each other through the streets. There was an all-ness and an every-ness to it - a pulse back and forth between one great sound and a multiplicity of smaller ones.


As a visual artist, writer, and Certified Anusara® Yoga teacher, Susanna infuses her classes with creativity, interweaving myth, poetry and philosophy to offer students an experience of intensity and grace. She has spent a decade studying with John Friend and Douglas Brooks.


Susanna has exhibited internationally, and spent years lecturing and writing for MoMA, including co-authoring Looking at Matisse and Picasso. She now takes delight in distilling complex yogic concepts into clear and vivid language so that her students can readily access their inner beauty. She is based at NYC’s Virayoga.


www.susannaharwoodrubin.com 34 OriginMagazine.com September/October 2011


In the next two weeks, I would find that the morning temple music and bells began punctually at 4:15am in every Tamil town, and that, anticipating it, I would consistently wake up a few minutes earlier, grabbing the pillow over my head, simultaneously grateful to be there and resentful about my absurd ongoing state of sleep-deprivation. Town after town, the external and the internal merged, broke apart, and swapped places. Sometimes you chant the mantra and sometimes it chants you.


he early morning sounds began one at a time, layering upon each other like an orchestra tuning up, finally


Chidambaram Temple Courtyard TOUCH S


treams of milk and flowers poured off of Nataraja, washing over my feet in the moonlight. The flowers stuck to my ankles and clung to the spaces between my toes. I hiked my sari up a polite inch, peering down at the swirling pool of milk in which I found myself standing. It soothed the blisters on the soles of my feet, scorched from the daytime heat of the temple stones.


It was strangely energizing. Just a moment ago I had felt utterly exhausted in a way that somehow didn’t seem quite normal – like an exhaustion that defined the word. Something about the chanting and the music and the hours spent sitting and standing on the stones of the temple. At this moment, a small group of us were closely gathered just to the side of Nataraja and his beloved, Shivakama Sundari, on a platform in Chidambaram Temple, overlooking a sea of thousands of faces. This was the Maha Abhisheka, the blessing of the deities in the form of poured offerings. It had started at 1:30 in the morning and would continue until dawn. Sandalwood paste, coconut water, ash, mango, flowers, honey, milk…


As the milk washed over the platform, it drained off the edge of the stones, where people below pressed up against the walls to catch it in empty water bottles. I bent down and dipped in my finger to taste its cool sweetness. We were being bathed in grace. We were ankle-deep in grace.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180