I spent the morning sleeping on the train from Aleppey to Madurai. The ride was relaxing & comfortable. As we neared Madurai, it grew hot and humid. Thorny bushes covered the dry ground, and a few lush hills lingered behind. Hardy palms stuck out over bright green rice paddies, punctuated by the whites of farmers’ clothing and egrets. It rained when we got near Madurai’s main temple, and I was planning to take a side trip to another town famous for some amazing temples, but since the train was so late, it was pointless. Welcome to Indian transportation. Madurai is the second-largest city in the state of Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is at the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent, and covers a large area in the southeast, bounded by the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean, and Eastern Ghats to the North. Tamil Nadu is the cradle of South Indian Dravidian civilization. It is suggested that ‘South India’ should be a different country, and Tamil Nadu is the ‘South India’ to which they refer. The language is Tamil, and Hindi is largely resented here. This doesn’t change the fact it was only Hindi and English in the train station. Tamil, a Dravidian language unrelated to Hindi, is incomprehensible for me except for the English cognates. The script looks like cartoon tadpoles, 5’s, and question marks, flipped every which way. All Dravidian empires made Tamil Nadu their home, the Golden Age being around 100 AD. The British, Dutch, and Danish fought for Madras (now named Chennai) as a trading post, and the British won out except for the French enclave and now Union Territory, Pondicherry. Madurai is located in the Southern portion of the state, smack-dab in the center, with good transport connections, so many tourists stop here. Historically, it was an ancient spice trading outpost and the site of sangam poetry. It became the Dravidian capital of the Hindu empires. I stopped at the first travel agent I laid eyes on outside the train station, and booked a city sightseeing tour, and a tour of Rameswaram & Kanyakumari with them, which will occupy me for a good three days. A tout took me to a cheap, okay hotel, the New Ruby, for only $3, 20 times less than my accommodation two nights ago in Kerala. I walked down the busy street to the Sri Meenakshi Temple, the best example of Dravidian temple architecture in the world. It was stunning. The gopuram, or entry gate towers, were intricately carved, with thousands of figures covering the friezes, all in brilliant color, and standing a tall 150 feet. It was built by a Nayak architect in the 16th century. The inner sanctum wasn’t that impressive, it was just a water tank surrounded by a huge hallway with decorated store columns. Candles burnt everywhere, as people swished the air above the flames onto their heads and prayed to the dozens of deities lining the walls. Devotees included tourists, pilgrims, and Brahmin priests with painted foreheads and white skirts. The inlets had statues made of gold for puja, and only Hindus were allowed. It smelled like milk, flowers, sweat, and coconuts. The paths leading out of the temple were flanked by indoor vendors selling god posters, bangles, necklaces, books, toys and offerings. Loads of people were there worshipping, and so was a huge elephant. There was a museum in the 1000-Pillared Hall, pretty much self-explanatory. There were tons of blackened bronze round statues of Shiva & Vishnu with lots of arms, dancing (these are the stereotypical South Indian bronzes). The temple closed from 12-4, and everyone was eating lunch, basically fried coconut bread served on banana leaves. I was hassled by a crowed hawkers, trying to sell me autorickshaw rides, postcards, grass, and views of the temple. I went to a government emporium, which had a good rooftop view of the temple, so I had to fake like I wanted some Kashmiri shawls. I always say I want those, since I know them like the back of my hand now, so I can properly accuse them of trying to rip me off. I went to lunch at Meenakshi Bhawan, which was one of the best meals I’ve eaten in India. You pay 50 cents, and you get filtered water, and a banana leaf as a plate. Waitors come by with rice, plopping on coconut potatoes, sambar, dal, curd, papad, and other vegetables, all unlimited, and a dessert to finish off the meal. I usually don’t enjoy eating with my hands, but there were no utensils. So I mixed, scooped, and shoveled unlimited delicious food into my mouth, using my right hand, just like everyone else in the restaurant. South Indian is really starting to grow on me, and now it rivals North Indian cuisine. It’s also light, so I wasn’t tired for my sightseeing tour. We went in a minibus (me and a bunch of old rich Indian holiday makers, as usual) first to the Tirumalai Nayak Palace, which was deserted but the palace’s halls was immense. It’s ornate and one of the best examples of Indo-Saracenic architecture. We drove through the town, very colorful with bright Tamil Movie Posters and curly Tamil Writing. There was a lot of traffic, and the city was mostly earthy and working-class. Everyone looks racially white, but with dark brown to sometimes virtually black skin tones. Everyone also had white or yellow tikka powder on their foreheads. People here are generally smaller, darker and skinnier than North Indians. The next stop was the Gandhi Memorial Museum, with a history of the independence struggle, a room exhibiting Gandhi’s life, and the blood-stained loincloth Gandhi was wearing when he was shot, which he had got in Madurai. After that, we drove past coconut groves, banana fields, and rice paddies to a dark green hilly area, and saw some Shiva and Vishnu temples, with colorful gopurams and huge colonnaded corridors. Most of the devotees and all the priests usually look the same; bare-chested, wearing lungi skirts, barefoot, and with tikka lines across their foreheads, horizontal for Shiva worshippers, and V-Shaped indicating Vaishnavites. The priests had shaved heads (probably because they had made a pilgrimage to Tirupathi, where the deity likes hair, or they are widowed and by shaving your hair you show celibacy and deference to the deceased husband). After the tour I walked all over town trying to find a “hotel” (meaning, ‘restaurant’) with “meals” (thali). I found one, which dare I say… was almost as good as Saravana Bhawan. Then I went online and took my little orange notebook (which, since I don’t have a phone or accessible computer, has my life between its covers) to get my journal notes typed on the computer. Basically I’m outsourcing this journal. I love India.
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