Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast by Samanth Subramanian

andblessing. Not for the first time, I wondered what was in it for him—whether it was the sense that, at least for one day every year, the Bathini Gouds were the most important and influential people in Hyderabad. Whether it was that their fish ‘remedy’—remedy or not—defined them, gave them an identity. Whether there was some hidden commercial motive, or whether the Gouds really believed that they were sending people home asthma-free. Really, there was no way to tell. But for a few moments, watching Harinath at work, I was reminded powerfully of my grandfather and his healing sessions, of his roaring faith, and of how, in that charged slice of time, for both the healer and the healed—and even for me, watching with a child’s easily suspended disbelief—anything was possible. We could all be well again.

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On the ear lobe
that changed
history

    I n Manapadu, on the southern coast of Tamil Nadu, some imaginative soul has enlivened the uphill walk to the Church of the Holy Cross by installing reminders of Christ’s parallel struggle up the hill of Calvary. Every few metres, there are little plaster-of-Paris dioramas of the various stages of that journey: Here of Christ first shouldering the cross, there of Him stumbling under its weight, and further on of Veronica offering her veil to wipe His perspiration away. The series may well have been commissioned by a sly church elder, as if to challenge his lazier parishioners by saying: ‘You complain about this stroll uphill? Think of the trek your Lord undertook for you!’ But if that was the case, the dioramas are unnecessary, for not only is the slope gentle and forgiving on the ankles, but the Church of the Holy Cross is also irresistibly attractive—worthy, in fact, of a much steeper hill.
    On the December morning I visited, the wind hurried strongly off the sea, careening around the top of the hill in mad eddies, shrieking around the corners of buildings. The sun was not hotbut bright, and it was impossible to look without squinting at the brilliantly whitewashed walls of the church. The sea resembled a vast stretch of aluminium foil, slowly folding and unfolding itself. Standing near the church’s northern wall, I could see Manapadu’s perfect natural harbour, a long, sandy crescent of coast, with fishing boats pulled up the beach in ragged lines, and the water so shallow that the dirty brown of the seabed showed through the shining water. It was the Monday before Christmas, and I thought I was the only one there.
    The Church of the Holy Cross is a plain white building, trimmed in deep blue, a very Mediterranean-looking sort of structure. They say it holds a relic—a sliver of the true cross—that was brought to Manapadu in processional pomp from Cochin, over eight months in 1583. The sliver was, unfortunately, not on display, and I’m not sure it ever is. In front of the altar, an old woman sat with her hands clasped, praying noiselessly; if it hadn’t been for me, she would have had the small church entirely to herself. Near the giant cross in the apse, an old Bible stood open on a trestle table, its pages looking weary from use; on either side of the apse, blue windows creaked and groaned, buffeted by the wind. Despite that racket, and despite the ceaseless slap of the waves on the coast, I remember the church as being quiet. It can’t have been, of course, but memory often confuses tranquillity with silence.
    At this church, a rusted metal signboard will tell you, St. Francis Xavier offered Mass in 1542, his first on the eastern shores of India. He had arrived by sea from the opposite coast, hugging the southern Indian peninsula and making frequent stops all along. At Manapadu, he landed and, for reasons known only to himself, took up residence for some weeks in a cave. The cave still exists, a short walk down a sandy path leading from the church to the sea, past a newer and smaller shrine to the saint, on the rocky lip of the coast. There, a sign