Kumbakonamed-Part 2

My Mother, Mother-in-Law, Janani and I went temple hopping on Saturday. This was taken at the west end of the temple at Thiruvidaimarudur. It was a warm day and despite the heat, everyone except me seemed to feel ecstatic at visiting the temples. I was more interested in knowing more about the temple and the stories that surround it. I seem to want to know more about cultures, but I dont really take interest in following them fervishly until, I believe in them.

One of the ancestral houses in the village of Kadalangudi. One thing I notice is that most houses have bright-in-your-face paint adorned on the walls, and the door entrances are favoured for people with short height. Every step in the house had to be taken carefully. I am vertically higher than the height, and my tummy-post marriage is showing signs of unprecedented horizontal growth

Most of the houses, have a huge hall, with a single room for living. That kind of explains with the little privacy the couples got then, they made good use of it with a production line of kids every quarter(assuming many couples lived together as a joint family).

When we were in the temple, my bowels suddenly wanted to burst open and since I had to heed nature's call. I had to trek almost half a kilometre, and find a spot in the fields which could camouflage me from the people in the temple. I went and collected leaves and I was lucky most of the leaves had the mositure from the previous night, that helped me wipe my arse a little cleaner than a dry leaf would. The colour of the fields felt like the one shown in 'Jab we Met' where Shahid and Kareena speak meet at the tractor.

There was a tank nearby and I washed my hands there just in time for the pooja(prayer) to end. Lovely prasadam of Sakkara Pongal, Sundal and something else, which I enjoyed filling my stomach with.

Kumbakonamed!

You that the 'Chappel' stand was at the Adelaide oval? Time to change. There's a 'Chapple' stand at Vaitheeswaran Koil. Greg and Ian Chappel should be proud of their fame spreading to the remotest corners of India. My wife's family deity resides at Vaitheeswaran koil, 5 hours from Chennai on Road. We had been there to pay our obeisance to god. The temple has a strange tradition where you buy pepper and jaggery and immerse it in the pond and save some for a basket. I dont know if the temple has any means of cleaning this pollution.

This photo was taken at my wife's grandparents place inKumbakonam(Bharathy Nagar). There was a grand welcome for the two newly married grandchildren of their family (Wife and her cousin brother). Every day out there was a grand feast, with food served on the banana leaf. This place was away from the madness of Kumbakonam town, so there was a lot of peace and calm around the area. We also visited a couple of temples that was a hop skip and jump from the house.



This was taken in the morning of Saturday, at Thirunageswaram, a small town close to Kumbakonam. This town is famous for the 'Rahu-Kethu' temple and is believed to cure your problems. The more money you pay, you get a better view of the idols. The economically less priveleged, have to wait for a while in the lines, and have a gallery view(Door Darshan), while the richer ones, by the virtue of money come closer to the idols. This class divide was sick and I was thinking, why even have relegion and caste in the first place. I was all along thinking that if a VC had a chance, he should invest in a temple fund and become a trustee than put it in media/real estate/start ups. You would get better returns on your capital employed, as its easy to extract money based on the insecurities that plague people, making the devotess seek refuge by bribing god.

This was taken at Thiruvadaimarudur, a small town 15 kms from Kumbakonam. This was my mother's ancestral town, and her birthplace. She seemed all excited to visit the place, and even met a temple priest who was my aunt's classmate way back in the 1960's, when they studied at Thiruvidaimarudur. The temple was a nice place to doze off and also admire the artwork on the temple. This image in the temple shows how people blindly use charcoal to put their exam hall ticket numbers in the hope that God scans these numbers and sends a 'supari' to the examiners that these hall ticket numbers need to have higher scores than the pass mark. More higher scores are believed to be obtained, if you write in a bigger font, or perform some puja whose economic value is supposed to be proportionate to the marks you would want to bribe god from.

This was followed by an evening visit to Thanjavur to meet one of Janani's aunts, and spend some time there in their house, which had a lovely garden. I tried out Idli with Ghee and Chilli powder. Seemed a welcome departure from the normal oil and chilli powder.
There ends part 1 of this travellogue. Wait until Part 2