Diary – 12 January 2008

Years ago my divorce liberated me from many things, not least of which was a wife’s burden of organising the traditional family Christmas. Inevitably, come Boxing Day, I was whey-faced with fatigue and singularly lacking in ‘ho-ho-ho’. Subsequent Christmases have been spent in far-flung places and this year I have just returned from visiting Tamil Nadu and its myriad temples. Getting to grips with Indian gods is not easy. There are over 3,000 of them. But on this visit I came across a particularly fascinating one — Ardhanareshwara. It seems the god Siva in one of his earliest incarnations declared man and woman were equal, so Ardhanareshwara was given the human form of half man, half woman. Grotesque as it may sound, the figure is really very beautiful. Siva the perfect male form on the left, Parvati his wife, gloriously sensual on the right. This tentative attempt at equality was, however, swept aside by the Mughals when they invaded India and their legacy is all too sadly evident in the plight of women working in the villages, fields and roadsides today.