Pondiyalli Pralaya

Author – Santhosh G R/ Madhusmita Datta

Pondiyalli Pralaya (Deluge in Pondicherry)

To commemorate the anniversary of the trekking expedition in Kodai-Munnar an year back, and to ring in the new year, we decided to have a trip to pondi and roll about in the “sun-kissed” beaches.

Who?

QQ (Quli Qutub) – Santhosh G R

Miss Madhu/QT/Mrs QQ – Madhusmita Datta

DJinn (Dada Jinn) – Raghunandan Keshava

Ravi/Lower Body – Ravi H M

Nagi – Nagaraj C

Sanjayo – Sanjay Subramaniam

DD (Dagar Dany)/Kolakamandala – Dany K M

Day 0 – Dec 23

We had tickets to Madras on the Madras mail which would leave Blore late in the night. Tickets were for III AC, a new found fad among d_men to always travel by III AC and stay in AC hotel rooms. Nagi (who had stayed in the US) would not deem to have anything to do with non-AC stuff, QQ & DJinn were the other enthusiasts for this school of thought!!

Dinner was Chinese food + Haldiram’s Jamun. DJinn & Ravi, showed much enthusiasm in drinking the syrup of Jamun, while Dany was reluctant.

Mrs QQ in her usual jest wanted a punja (handwrestling game) with nagi and dany to show off her manly strength. Unfortunately for all of us Nagi & Mrs QQ ended in a tie, Dany was defeated by her. Unfortunate as this led to Mrs QQ strutting her stuff for quite some time.

We went to sleep warning nagi to not call up his future wife all thru the night and disturb our sleep. Nagi challenged Madhu to sleep on the floor of the compartment which obviously the clean Miss refused.

Day 1 – Dec 24

The train chugged into Chennai central, very early to our dismay. It was still 4:30 AM and Sanjay coming from Hyd was nowhere in sight. We sat down waiting for Sanjay cursing that a mail travels to Chennai so fast, while an express takes longer. Dany boy retired to the rest-room for ablutions, while QQ was more adventurous in daring to dump his stuff on a train. Madhu remembered to get some paper towel much against QQ’s wishes as it was taking up too much space in his bag, and it so happened that he was the only one to use it!!! DJinn warned QQ to be careful and finish his session soon, before the train moved away and having to jump out with his pants down.

After Sanjay arrived (almost at 6AM) from Hyderabad, we went to the world famous Saravana Bhavan (as mentioned in previous travelogues, they have units in LA, SFO, etc..) for breakfast which consisted of appam, dosa & thick strong coffee.

We hired 3 autos to Coyambedu which is the central bus terminus in Chennai reaching there at 8 am. This bus stand is grand, looks like a railway station, is clean and well maintained in spite of everything. All compared this bus stand to the one in B’lore and even Nagi had to agree that this was better!!

We boarded an ECR (East Coast Road) bus to Pondi, managing to convince DJinn and Nagi to board a non-DVD player bus. Our bus flamboyantly displayed a board which said “AIR cooling rider”. We discussed at length what that could mean, and finally came to the conclusion that the cool and salty sea breeze (it even smelled of the sea) was a natural air cooler. All that a passenger need do was keep the window open!!

The ride on the ECR is beautiful, with the road passing about ½ to 1 km of the sea, view of sun-kissed beaches, palm/coconut groves, little patches of beach meant for making salt, prawn fisheries. QQ pointed to a cottage resort on the road, which Mrs QQ flagged out to be nothing but a fishermen’s village. A number of bill boards mentioning local prawn farms and prawn seeds. This set off the salivary glands of sea food lovers amongst us into an overdrive. QQ was already making a list of all the sea food he wanted to try out. Throughout the journey QQ and Nagi were busy comparing the cell-info display on their mobile networks of Airtel and BSNL. BSNL always showed the area we were in, while Airtel as usual was most of the time blank. Most of the gang had a good nap during the journey. Hunger was somewhat abated by Sanjay’s US chocolates. We reached Pondi at noon, after a rest stopover.

As is well known, Pondi is one half pucca chettinad, while the other half (I would say just about 1/10 and not half) is French. The bus stand was in the chettinad half. To cross the road, there was a pedestrian flyover, which was full of stench and shit. Ravi was surprised of how people used the pedestrian walkway as their toilet and what if there were dogs nearby?

We spent a while searching for a lodge. MASS a pretty big lodge did not have any vacancy, or even if he had vacancy wasn’t interested in letting it out to us. Finally we managed to get 2 rooms in “MNM Guest House”. Of course AC rooms with cable TV.

We finished our bath as quickly as we could, with nagi taking photos of Dany in his undressed grandeur (of crse with a kacha/undie) on his mobile camera. Ravi and Djinn as usual took forever to finish their bath.

We had a heavy lunch at MASS, consisting of a lot of chettinad delicacies. They served water in copper chambus (small pot shaped container). We took a lot of pictures with the chambus. They didn’t serve us papds with our meal, that was the only thing missing.

Our first destination was the French quarters & Aurobindo ashram. We decided to walk towards the French quarters.

Pondi botanical gardens separate the French part from the chettinad part. A road divides the two. Once you cross over, you find all the road names only in French. All the houses have an elaborate door frame. Door frames on Christian houses have a symbol of the heart atop the cross, while the hindu houses have the symbol of the lion in the popular chola style. Pondi also has many cats on the street. We saw many varieties of them, one of them even resembling a Siamese cat, posing for Mrs QQ to admire and take some pictures. The house the cat belonged to was just as beautiful as the cat. We could see the courtyard thru the open door at the entrance. Lovely panels carved in wood, antique furniture and fixtures on the walls and ceiling. Mrs QQ was totally impressed by this house and longed to have one of her own. We walked for 2-3 kms after which we came to a drain. We could see the difference in the roads on the other side of the drain. It was neat, with the footpaths having a cobbled look, raised roads with a thick layer of tar, unlike the tar-paint in Mysore (as quipped by Mrs QQ). Raghu was on the lookout for Rendezvous a restaurant suggested by Sh.. his secret girlfriend. The French town is beautiful, and very charming. There are a lot of roof top restaurants, but sadly all these restaurants cater to only the videshi junta with exhorbitantly priced food. We were treated like second class citizens in our own country!!! What an outrage.

Going further on we suddenly reached the sea-side embankment. The view from here was mind-blowing. Imagine a walkway along the sea, with a neatly paved road on one side and the sea on the other side. Boulders and rocks form the embankment. Ravi hurried down along with Mrs QQ, to drink in the beauty of nature and was lost in reverie. Mrs QQ had a tough time trying to hold down her skirt from the blowing wind, much to her chagrin, and much to the amusement of the onlookers, who were waiting with bated breath for her skirt to blow up and getting a glimpse at her legs/thighs!!!

After a good rest on the rocks we stared walking along the sea. The avenue is full of old style colonial buildings, beautiful and majestic. At this point a street-vendor peddling a dolu ( a small drum/mridanga) started stalking us. Mrs QQ was his target and he finally enticed her to buy a small dolu for a large price. Nagi commented that “Madhu, you proved that girls are dumb – manda, pedda, guldu etc etc by buying that drum”. The drum would have costed around 25/50 bucks but Mrs QQ ended up paying 200. The vendor pursued us for some more time, trying to make Madhu buy a bigger drum also. Meanwhile another peddled offered a similar drum for 150 and made Madhu realize that she was cheated. She blasted the vendor of having cheated, but the deal was done and could not be retracted.

Proceeding further, we came to a raised platform with Bapuji’s statue in the center and decorated by carved pillars all around, and the open ocean as the backdrop. Facing this statue there was a little road leading to a huge garden and there was a little statue of Nehru nearby. Ravi and Sanjay were very enthusiastic in answering to a foreign-female about whose statue it was. Dany spotted a roadside peddler on a gaadi (pushcart) selling music CDs. The CDs were cheap, just 20 Rs, a steal considering an empty CD itself costs 20. There were a lot of Rahman, Ilayaraja music MP3s.. a veritable treasure trove of pirated music. In the garden there was a shapely woman holding a pot on her waist and water was flowing out of the pot, which DJinn as usual stopped to admire. This was a fountain in the garden. Walking along the garden, with Madhu playing her dhol and singing some silly songs to entertain all we came to the secretariat building and circle with the statue of Sardar Patel.

There was an imposing building with guards dressed like french gendarmes, wearing red cap which Madhu clicked away. We reached a temple for vinayagar (Ganesha). An elephant, as is usual in temples was near the door. The elephant would reach out and bless you only if tipped with some coins or rupee. QQ & DJinn entered a building which looked haunting and asked one of the inmates for the way to Aurobindo ashram. A bit further was the ashram along with Aurobindo’s house.

The Aurobindo house is vintage, photography not allowed, flowers not allowed, and disturbing the flower arrangement on the samaadhi of Aurbindo not allowed as per instructions from the mother. We discussed about the nature of relationship between the mother and aurobindo, concluding that there was some ting-ting between them. The house also encloses a book shop of Aurobindo related writing. We bought some small books, with Dany investing in a Veda book, which obviously he would not finish, and neither understand.

Mrs QQ alongwith QQ, went for a walk around. They noticed some more cats, and a very endearing scene of a dog sleeping on a window sill, with it’s head placed in between the grill and jutting out into the street. Also, they noticed that a unique way of finding out the ashram was to check out the roads. The road around the ashram was cobbled with cement blocks while elsewhere it was tarred. QQ was fascinated by all the women on cycles, almost all of them were in shorts, and not just the French gals. Chocolate colored Indian ladies too, and speaking fluent French and riding cycles in khaki shorts. Two disparate cultures not just coexisting, but influencing each other and bringing about a totally new and unique type of living.

We went back to the sea-side walkaway and proceeded towards the circle which has the statue of Gandhi. Madhu & Sanjay went to have some kale-kaayi (peanuts).

What happened next was strange. We wanted a group photo taken with Gandhi Thata in the background. Madhu tried first to get someone to click the photo, they were local people (Indian, coz in Pondy even the French should be considered as locals) but nobody would oblige. And the rest of the gang, esp QQ was hasty is criticizing Madhu for choosing people who would obviously refuse. So it was Dany’s turn, as it was his camera. And this time it became clear to us that this is another unique feature of this place – people will refuse to take your picture come what may. Dany’s theory –people get scared when they see my camera, it’s so big and looks so complicated, they’re afraid they’ll make a mistake. Madhu’s theory – these pondy guys are nuts!! TAP TAP!! And finally a phirang dude agreed to click, we all thanked him.

We walked back in the moonlight, enjoying the view of the sea glittering in the silver light. We were all wishing for the same thing, to be able to stay at a hotel that overlooked the sea, to spend the night just watching the waves. And just then we spotted just such a hotel – Sea View Guest House (not sure of name). Promptly Madhu and Dany went in to enquire. All the rooms were booked for the next day – it was xmas day as well as the day for entrance exam for JIPMER (Jawahar lal Institute of Post grad in MedicinE and Research)- not sure again!! Rooms were available for just that night, and the rates were cheaper than the MNM Guest House. We felt a little bad, coz moving out of our current hotel just for the night would be a waste of money. Promising ourselves of making stay arrangements before any trip we walked towards Rendezvous restaurant. The hotel was a KLPD (an expression to say it was a letdown). We floundered around the French town searching for a restaurant and could not manage to find anything worthwhile. Deciding to head back, we reached MASS where we had our Dinner. Dinner comprised of heavy heavenly Prawn chettinad, Chinese, pakodas and Cocktails of bloody mary, screw driver along with hard liquor. Some stuff discussed over dinner – road rage and how to control it, no more drinks for the rest of the year and the year after for women. Raghu got a call from Sh… and she gave him some good advice. How we should celebrate Xmas eve, what kind of food to eat, etc etc (coz he wouldn’t have shared everything with us of course ;-) So on Sh.. advice we bought some plum cake from the cake shop in Hotel MASS, and before we hit the bed, we had a small ceremony of cake cutting (Madhu’s swiss knife) and some half baked carols. That was enough to say we officially celebrated Christmas eve in the proper way. Gang fell asleep in no time at all after a few sips of red wine and rum cake.

Day 2 – Dec 25

Having had our bath our plan was to visit the famed beaches of Pondi. We had breakfast in a nearby Arya Bhavan. A fake Arya Bhavan hotel as it did not have the photo of the owner with thick rimmed glasses on. We had the usual stuff, Idli Sambar and like all places in TN, they serve chatni like it’s some prasada. We kept asking for more chatni, till they got annoyed, as if we cared. Such rude people in the restaurant!! We finished b’fast with some sweets. Poor Dany, his b’fast was completely ruined – dahi wada, with the dahi so sour he had to waste it.

We caught a bus to Auro beach. Initially Mrs QQ was irritated with the volume of the music in the bus, but later started appreciating the beats and rural tempo of the tamil film songs.

A walk from the bus-stand in between trees led us to the auro beach.

Fig : d_men at their athletic best trying to do headstands!!!

The beach has been partitioned into sections for the Auro-ashram guests and the rest, it’s more a separation between scantily clad foreigners vs Indians frolicking in the sea in their sarees, pants etc.

We went about playing in the water with gusto.

Events held on the beach by us included

• Headstand on the sand
• Handstand on the sand, and landing on your back by QQ
• Ravi attempting to do sirsaasana (headstand) on the waters edge, facing the sea and trying to stay put even after the waves hit him
• Nagi, trying to flip-flop on his back, getting his whole back on the sand
• A running race on the sand which DJinn won
• A running race in the water which QQ won
• Burying Nagi completely in the sand. Mrs QQ even went ahead to make mock female appendages on sand covered Nagi. See photos for details. 2 pieces of shell were used strategically.
• Failed attempt by Ravi to make a castle, then a pyramid, then just giving up!!
• A punja (handwrestling) btn Lower Body Ravi and DJinn which Ravi won, but with stiff resistance from DJinn
• A punja btn Sanjay and a local frail looking tamil boy. The tamil boy showed immense resistance and Sanjay could defeat him after much struggle aided by our boisterous egging.
• Lots of photo sessions in Undies et all, Mrs QQ and QQ posing in intimate embrace making all the other boys seethe with jealousy.
• D.Dany ever affable posing for photos on the sand in his Austin-Powerish display of chest hair. Also his shorts looked like mini shirts!!! We all had a laugh.
• Making Kappe goodus (Frog houses) in the sand, consisting of a lot of tunnels in the sand all interlinked in the center. One could put his hand thru one of the tunnel and catch hold of another’s hand coming in from some other tunnel
• Building of a pyramid by Ravi, rather trying to build a pyramid. Inspite of having a coconut shell for help, he could not accomplish the task.
• A lot of questions to Dany about “Yaake aagabaaradu??” which he would not answer.
• Dany showing off his undies full of sand, and the pockets of sand filled with sand

Ravi who was reluctant to join us for the beach in the morning because of his fever turned out to be the most enthusiastic in the beach activities as is his wont, always enjoying nature and “natural” activities. Mrs QQ missed the whole fun, having to sit on the sand and watch our belongings. She wanted us to visit the beach again tomorrow, even if it meant foregoing some other spots.

We walked back to the road, encountering a lot of vehicles with Bangalore licences, which nagi observed and pointed that people in Blore seem to be the most “free”. Madhu picked up a lot of red coloured seeds with a black eye. And QQ was ranting in the background saying that they were poisonous. It seems these seeds are ground up and taken with milk for abortion!!

We had lots of tender coconut, in fact emptying all the tender coconuts being sold by a vendor. We caught an auto back to the hotel. Mr and Mrs QQ, along with Sanjay came last. They wanted to take the bus back but after waiting for a long time with the French people, they decided to do what the French did – take an auto. After reaching the hotel, we all had our bath shedding all the collected sand from our clothes, with Dany making the whole bathroom dirty with sand.

We hired autos for our next destination which was Auroville, a UNO funded venture to create a sort of utopian city. The autos had to detour from the ECR road (East Coast Road) thru some kaccha (untarred) roads so as to escape the net of tamil nadu traffic police. The road to Aurovilla which is in Pondi passes thru part of Tamil nadu, where there lurk a lot of police, trying to embezzle money by catching hold of vehicles without permit to ply in tamil nadu. We reached Auroville after a bumpy ride. There was a queue to visit the auro-gallery. Once you passed thru the gallery you come to a counter where you can collect passes to visit Matrimandir. Strange as there is no fees, but an inordinate delay to collect a free pass which really serves no purpose!!

To reach Matrimandir you had to walk a long way thru a partially arched walkway. On the way Madhu found a chakuli hula (millipede). She held it in her palm for it to uncoil, but Nagi was totally disgusted. He made Madhu put the millipede back. Unfortunately he lost his way after Madhu held it, he was found crushed on the way back. He strayed into the path and people squashed him to death. Poor thing!!

Matrimandir is a strange building in the form of a globe. The outer surface is plastered with a lot of discs with gold plating. At the top of a globe are mounted 3 mirrors, which are moved thru a microprocessor aided motor, so as to catch the light of the sun all thru the day and reflect it into the globe. This light shines on a large crystal, supposedly one of the largest and is the only means of lighting inside. The crystal in turn reflects all the sunlight and keeps the dome “naturally” lighted. You can sit in the globe and meditate. We had a discussion on the frail usage of technology while the motive was to create a quite place for meditation. We also had interesting discussions about what would one do if he felt like farting inside the meditation chamber, to which Ravi & DJinn answered that the soft pillows provided for seating would muffle the sound, and QQ added that holding the pillow to ones nose was a sure-fire way of being chloroformed. Of course as the building was under construction since about 20 years, we were not allowed to go in, but only able to view from a view-point, where a keeper upbraided all the assembled to be silent.

We had a long walk back to the Auro canteen. The famed “hibiscus” juice as recommended by Djinns girlfren turned to be a damp squib, with no novelty. Mrs QQ found that it was more lime juice than hibiscus. However Djinn defended saying that it was just diluted, but was really a very good juice. We also had a look at the ethnic clothes showroom inside the ville limits. We returned by autos to our hotel. Needless to say we were thankful to return in one piece, the rick drivers were reckless.

We planned to go to the sea side promenade for a leisurely walk and have dinner in the French town for the night. Nagi & Ravi wanted to give it a go and stay in the hotel till dinner time. Ravi for resting, and Nagi for calling his beau. The rest trudged off to the old “Sacred Heart“ church. The church is very near to the auro-ashram, and is a huge and magnificient structure.

Just the previous day, Sanjay called this building “do minar”- view from the sea side walk, and it turned out to be a church!! Not much of gothic architecture but the building is imposing with very good architecture inside. After this we proceeded to “Goubert” avenue, which is the sea facing road mentioned above. We had a nice relaxed sit on the embankment. Dany, Mrs QQ & Sanjay had a meandering walk on the promenade. They discovered some good restaurants and even booked a table for 7 in one of them. They also saw some road signs that mentioned “Sea Gulls” restaurant but didn’t venture into the dark road to verify. They were so hungry after the walk and photo session (against a statue in a tiny park at the end of the sea side walkway) they had to have some masalapuri from a rajasthani gaadi opposite to the restaurant where the table was booked. By the time they went back to join QQ and Djin it was 7:30 PM. We called Nagi and Ravi to joining us. We were now on the look out for a good place to have our dinner. We tried at all places, including Rendezvous. But they just made us wait and never got back to us even after half an hour. Our tummies were beginning to groan quite loudly by then and we decided to go back to the place where Madhu had booked a place for the gang. But before going into that restaurant Madhu wanted to check out Seagulls first. While the rest of the gang waited, QQ and Madhu checked this place out. Madhu managed to get a fantastic place for the gang and waited there till the rest of them arrived. This place was recommended by Mrs QQ’s fren in England –Raj. The hunt had taken a while, but the view from that place was well worth the wait. It was simply the best place in town, cool breeze from the sea filtering through moonlit coconut leaves hitting our faces, while we sipped our drinks. We could see a ledge that went into the sea, and beyond that we could spot some buoys, which were mistaken for ships by some. Seagull restaurant faces the sea and from the roof-top one can have a good view of the sea pounding on to the rocks below while you sip your choice of poison. Food was exotic with a mix of French and Chettinad cuisine. We had loads of liquor filling our bellies. Liquor proved to be our blessing in disguise for events which happened on the next day. We hired autos and retired for the day at the hotel.

Day 3 – Dec 26

The day began early at 6:30 AM for Dany & Sanjay; they went to Goubert avenue for an early morning stroll and seeing the sunrise. They tried to wake up the rest of the gang to accompany them, but did not find much enthusiasm. They returned early having no company.

It was decided that we visit the beach again before returning to Chennai. After breakfast we got into a bus to reach Auro beach again. The bus stopped midway and suddenly turned back and headed back into town. There was a lot of talk about the sea having rushed into the city - utter confusion. Treating it as rubbish we started walking towards the beach. We found a lot of people on strike on the road, blocking all the traffic. Mrs QQ was appropriately shouted down by the others when she wanted to take the photos of the striking populace. DJinn felt good about the fact that our trip also gave us a feeling of getting caught in between a revolution, a la Tintin and Picarros. The walk was getting tiring. Lower Body Ravi with his Deep Vein Thrombosis leg was finding it very difficult to walk. There was still confusion and rumors of the sea having rushed in and houses lost. Finally we decided to head back and drop the idea of reaching the beach. Ravi was in misery and we didn’t want him to suffer more. Heading back we found a willing scooty ridden person who agreed to drop Ravi further on. We split and found autos to head back to the hotel.

There was shocking moments for us at the hotel. On asking for a taxi which could take us to Mahibalipuram, the hotel proprietor said that the city was flooded by the sea and people had lost their lives. Going to our room, Dany turned the TV on to BBC which reported that an earthquake in Indonesia had unleashed a huge Tsunami on to the coast of India and many lives were lost. The reality hit us and we thanked our stars for having saved us. Nagi suggested that we leave the place as early as possible. He dropped sanjay to the bus stand; Sanjay had to catch an early train to Hyderabad.

After some rest at the hotel we checked out of the hotel and went to MAS for our lunch. We splurged on our lunch with a bottle of wine & rich French cuisine and king prawns. All of us started receiving frantic calls from home and friends asking us if we were safe and were not affected by the tsunami.

Catching a bus to Chennai was an ordeal with multiple queues for securing seats. The journey back was shocking with grizly scenes of the sea having engulfed much of the land. The beach we had frolicked in and wanted to reach in the morning was under water. The whole coastal road was one of devastation, seeing a lot of land submerged, a lot of people on the road with their lifetime belongings. Again we were thankful and thanked our luck of having Mrs QQ, Miss Sandhu’s phone calls & Ms Sh….’s phone calls, which were had been our good luck charms. Ravi, D Dany & QQ regretted the fact that no one called to find if they were ok. There were a lot of calls from Somanna (an affectionate name for Mrs QQ’s father, coined by Nagi) to find if we were safe, every other hour.

We reached Chennai and reached Chennai central well in time. Dinner was at Saravana bhavan, where Dany in his eccentricity was unwilling to join us because of lack of space. Our journey back was uneventful except for Nagi uttering the name of his friend “Devaru” whom he blames for all the misfortunes.

Post trip

The next day was one of revelation, having escaped the Tsunami at such close quarters. Almost 150000 died in the devastation, with Pondi & nearby beaches affected the most in India. We paid our full respects to Hotel Seagull, with DJinn quipping that even though people say that “Kuditadinda Sarvanaasha” (i.e. Drinking leads to complete destruction), it was the liquor which had providentially saved us on the trip.

Additional Notes:

** Dinner at Seagulls: As yenne got the better of us, ravi in particular. Out came words..most of which were targetted at DD, We ganged up against DD because of a statement he made saying "Mysore is a village..". In the end, Ravi D retorted by saying "I give a shit to you.."

** Do we rem the names of the French food items we had...Oriental sea food salad ....?? (Madhu had noted this down on a paper napkin!)

**Tablets given to Ravi by Mrs. QQ and the complications & implications to his lower body...sounded out to him... ;-)

** Stilted roots in Matri mandir premises and our observations..

Mahabalipuram Mosale

Author : Santhosh G R

Mahabalipuram Mosale (Crocs), Massaging a monitor lizard & a bit of Madarasu

The team:

Nairs (Biju Nair S)

TexMex (Tekula man Prakash Tekula)

Maamalla Santhosh G R

Menon (Biju’s friend; to a lesser extent)

Madhu (Santhosh’s girl fren; Absent but present abstractly throughout the trip)

A word of caution: Some of the descriptions, incidents, words are graphic. Proceed if and only if you don’t get offended by the doings of two adrenaline pumped bachelors and one innocent married man (me)

Also the travelogue is very detailed, running more than 10 pages ;-))

D-Day “--1”

The first choice for the trip was a trek up Tirumala hill, decided over food on plantain leaves. TexMex vetoed the trip as we was tired of going to Tirumala so often and he didn’t have any immediate desires which the lord could fulfill. He even threw the suggestion of asking the lord for a good wife, with the right amount of knowledge, patience and the ever so important right amount of fat in the right places.

Finally, dudes decided to goto Mahabalipuram, or Mammalapuram. TexMex booked the tickets with a patient wait of 1 hour at an unearthly 8AM.

Nairs took over the job of finding out the places to see, happening places not to be missed, booking hotels with the help of his friend.

D-Day “-1”

Journey started at the bangalore railway station. A lot of books for stimulating the mind and the muscles were bought for the journey. On the train, TexMex was found poring over in detail the magazines which had an editorial on Indian sleaze. He even came up to the upper berths along with nairs and me, even after a warning that the junta would consider us “queers” for sharing the upper berth.

D-Day “1” (Sat Nov 6, 2004)

The train chugged into Chennai central early, at 5:00. Thanks to nairs fren, we had a room booked at a hotel in Nugambakkam. We wanted the check-in time to be 7AM so that we could leave at 7Am the next day. TexMex had a brilliant idea of booking the hotel only for the night, and managing to pot and clean up somehow, maybe on the streets of sriperumbudur. Me and nairs were against the idea. We wanted a proper pot on which to pot and clean up, also we couldn’t imagine how we do the above without TexMex giving us concrete ideas. Anyways, a hotel was booked and waiting for us. The problem at hand was to reach the place. Nairs fren had told us that it would cost arnd 30-40 bucks to reach the place, and enterprising Nairs had a map to boot. The map gave a twist to our journey. I in my exercise-induced excitement, suggested that we could walk all the way to the hotel. Using my fingers I measures the map and compared it to the scale provided on the map to show that the distance was a meager 2 kms. This could help us also in building pressure for the oncoming potty session.

The walk started on the Poonamallee high road, much to chagrin of all the touts, auto-rick-wallahs, hotel brokers, whom we treated with contempt, with Biju becoming vitriolic with irritation.

A unique feature of the Poonamallee high road: btn Chennai central and Egmore crossroad, a distance of only a km or so, we found innumerable no. of potholes. In fact in a short stretch of 200 metres, there were 116 + 100 odd potholes on the sidewalk. Walking thru it was like meandering thru a mine of pothole covers. Biju, suggested that this might be where the gold, the kanchipuram sarees of Kum. JJ was hidden, a novel idea indeed.

The walk was longer than expected, almost 7 kms, taking us an hour and half to cover the stretch. On the way we encountered, railway project managers rest house ( a palatial building?? ), lot and lots of hospitals, Medical college mens hostel (with no girls hostel anywhere nearby – sadly), an effluent and stanching Kuvam river – the supposedly life vein for chennais dirt, a grotesque flyover on Nugambakkam high road inaugurated by Murasoli maran (which was obviously unused, considering it was on a narrow, non-jammed road).

Finally we reached hotel Ranjith, in front of Income tax (aykar) bhavan and beside Taj Coramandel. Later we were to find Anna salai, American consulate, malls with a lot of nubile young things in and around the building. A quick bath, some telly-watch, and we were out to have the complimentary hotel-breakfast. Biju was hungry after the long walk, and went at the food like a hog. Uttapams, parotas, idlis, chutney vanished down our mouth, to the utter dismay of the attendants. We finished with thick black coffee and tea and vada.

Chennai auto-wallahs are a different breed. Unlike our much touted quality-standards there is no standardized auto-meter; they quote the price they want and get off with it. The tip is to always catch a “running auto” and not one in the stand, as the “running” ones quote lesser (thanking the hotel guys for the valuable tip).

We took a auto to Koyambedu, the mofussil bustand of Chennai, huge and a veritable behemoth of a building. The auto drive cost us 65 after much haggling and Biju’s nonchalant walk-away from the auto driver. After some phone calls (how could I not call madhu??) we took a bus to Mahabs. All buses plying on this route are termed ECR buses, to say that they use the East Coast Route. I insisted on a DVD bus but to no avail. Some of the buses punchlines went like “Fast and Safe”. The conductor issuing tickets did not know of any place called Crocodile park enroute to mahabs. He did not even know the fair and took some imaginary-conjured amount to our benefit.

The journey thru Chennai is as bad as thru Bommanahalli, if not worse. 12-15 kms within the city took an hour, and the rest of the 40+ kms took the same time. The road outside Chennai was a very smooth, specially the tolled ECR road, which is of comparable US standards. ECR road has road-signs everywhere, one sign of “Cow crossing” too. Biju had a question “In the US, if you hit a deer near a deer crossing zone, you can take it home and eat it. What if we hit a cow near a cow crossing? The answer is that you will be eaten!!!”

We got down at Crocodile (mosale) park, run by an American couple, with more than a thousand crocs. Seeing the croc pond was such an amazing sight. Tekula quipped that this was not a croc park but a croc parking lot; there really were so many. The enclosures were not very high, but safe. One can watch the crocs up close and personal from a very safe distance. The nos would amaze anyone. Baby turtles and baby croc were displayed in a small glass acquarium. One could buy a ticket to hold the croc and get photos taken. After some initial hesitation, but later remembering Steve from animal planet (whom madhu likes, inspite of me not wanting her to), I decided to hold the baby croc and get a snap, to vex madhu and gain over Steve’s influence.

You need to hold the baby with two hands, one over the neck, so that it doesn’t snap at you. On being told this, a foreign couple said “is it like my in-law, or is it better?”. I told them that the croc has not bitten as told by the caretaker,

the lad replied asking “did he not show you a cut finger to prove otherwise”.

We walked thru the park, seeing some colorful iguanas, a really huge monitor lizard, a beautiful underwater glass display of a croc pond, with cat fish, turtles (such a beautiful sight of the croc standing in the water with it’s hind legs and tail for balance), a python with a rat which it was trying to gobble up. Some human monkeys who hissed at the python and king cobra to rattle them (I just hoped that these humans cld be inside the cage with the cobra hissing at them). We enjoyed all the sights, and ended with a pee in a slippery bathroom, with me juggling and balancing my camera.

Next was a visit to the snake park with the croc park, where venom extraction was being displayed. Four poisonour snakes, a Russel viper, a krait, cobra (“naja naja” as told by Tekula) and Sawscaled viper. the handler handled (sorry for the pun), the snakes with ease. Around 400 pots with cloths covering them held 400 odd snakes. All of varying degree of poison, but all potent killing machines if provoked. The viper was at it’s angriest, moving a piece of cloth produced such lout hissing sound, I literally had “romanchana”. The cobra moved with such speed whenever the handler looked away and tried to bite him, such speed. We saw the venom being extracted from the viper; the snake is marked after extraction by removing one of the scale which grows back. The krait being the smallest, was cute, but deadly as they come. The handlers have been around for 20 odd years and even been bitten by the cobra once. They have a vehicle on hand for rushing them to the hospital (god help them, on a bad traffic jam day).

One could take photos of oneself with a python wrapped around the body, but seeing the python and the time we opted out.

Coming out of the croc park, we caught a maxi-cab to mahabs. I started a conversation with a localite in my itsy-bitsy tamil and got to know of the dolphin stadium, where previously 4 dolphins entertained (now dead), sea lion entertainment, raama temple, sai temple, jain temple, finally the localite’s house on the main road, with an offer to look him up the next time we were in-and-around. We also got a tip to lunch at Guru hotel in mahabs.

The first visit on reaching mahabs was to Guru hotel. A sumptuous meal with 2 vegetable curries, pallya, rasam, fish fry, prawn masala, chicken curry, prawn curry. We walked into the city of mahabs towards the rock of arjuna’s penance. On the way we stopped again to call home (me calling and waking up madhu in Phoenix). I also bought a MP3 CD of rahman songs for a mere Rs40.

Arjunas penance is bass relief on stone. It strangely has the carving of Ganga Avatarana (the descent of ganga). One can see the sculpture of surya, chandra, arjuna who is enervated. Carving of a cat meditating is beautiful, the cat being round and healthy feigning holiness, but eating all the rats which come near. The deer motif used on old Rs10 notes is also from this relief. We hired a guide to explain us the details. Next was to an unfinished cave. Another finished cave with Krishna holding Govardhana, krsna with gopikas. There was an Egyptian influence in the form of a sphinx. We proceeded towards the big monolotic ganesha temple, sculpted out of a single massive granite. Behind it was cave temples with vaamana, durga carvings. The cave temples had a moat in front of them, which would be filled with water, so that one’s feet is washed before entering the temple, nice technology.

Mahabs was sculpted by the pallava kings, most of the temples and carvings are unfinished, probably due the constant threaten of warfare. Granite is natural. Behind the gangaavatarana relief are huge granite “mountains”, one of which has a delicately balanced butter ball (almost 10 meters across). British tried to pull the rock with elephants but could not. We saw the brahma-vishnu-maheshwara temple, the curd-butter pot of Krishna (a huge well carved out of stone).

Tekula bought a ganesha carving and we walked onwards on the granite towards the distant lighthouse. We had a good time climbing the rock, making biju exercise by doing some mountain climbing, some more caves to watch and reached the lighthouse and another stone temple. Sadly the lighthouse was locked and we could climb up. Also, passed by a lot of foreigners, obviously on the lookout for a secluded place to hook on to ganja (grass).

We proceeded towards Pandava rathas, nowhere related to pandavas but named after them. The path to the rathas is lined with a lot of sculpture shops, like mechanics carving ganeshas, lions, cros, women with unimaginable proportions and deep dark and thickly protruding nipples. Biju took photos so that he could present them to me later. Pandava rathas are again monolithic carvings, one carving of a huge elephant. A ground of Spanish with an Indian guide who spoke fluent espanyola were also present; we were amused. Coming out of the pandava ratha enclosure, we were surrounded by knick-knack sellers with small sculptures. We were enticed to buy ganesha and some very shocking kama-sutra carvings, but later realizing that they looked more like plaster of paris molds rather than hand carvings. They came very cheap.

Next destination was the shore temple. There were 7 temples in mahabs, 6 being swallowed by the sea, one remaining which is protected by an stone embankment. Another monolithic sculpture, with amazingly wide courtyard made of stone. We had a long photo session, with Tekula deleting the old uneccessary photos to make way for the current ones.

Proceeding towards the beach from the temple, we decided to have a “shooting game” at the beach front. A sum of 15 rupees fetched us 15 shots. I was the most successful with 4 hits out of the 4, the last one being to a moving/waving balloon which missed by a whisker. Being successful I got a bonus shot to end at 5 hits out of 6. Tekula and Biju accepted my supremacy after a lot of haggling. We had tea at the beach, sitting down, with our legs dangling over the sand. Seeing far beyond into the sea; getting dark it was a peacefully poignant moment, with us missing these moments in our day to day life. We were very very happy, going back to our childhood, with Tekula remembering a lot of his sessions with his girlfren (now married and with a kid )in his hometown. Some more photos with the waves at our feet, waiting for the big 7^th wave.

We trudged back towards the bus, had some thick badam milk, with real pieces of badam, some chakli (murukku) and took the bus to Chennai. Coincidentally it was the same bus we came by. We passed thru Kovalam enroute. There were huge painting advertising “Ustaad condoms” in kovalam.

We were joined by Bijus’s fren Menon at the hotel. Unlike biju, his fren has been enterprising enf to hook one of his classmates. Biju told us of how he was part of a group which helped menon to get his future wife. Saravana bhavan (world famous with braches in NY and LA) was our preferred destination for food. Food was costly affair with dosas, appams, shahi tukdaa, and the tab was picked by bijus fren. Our night ended with Tekula and me watching a Surya channel movie, me with wonder of why everyone was interested in late night movies on surya channel. Turned out to be a moral story, but interlaced with copius amount of big mallu women in only blouse and skirt!!!

D-Day “2” (Sun Nov 7, 2004)

We had decided to get up 5 and be ready by 6. Biju had volunteered for the task, but as his wont let us down and woke us a bemoaning 7. We hurried, with a namesake bath and checked out of the hotel by 8am. The destination for the day was Kanchipuram, and we filed off to Koyambedu for another bus journey. Our breakfast consisted of a lot of biscuits, sweets, junk stuff, which lasted almost all thru the day. This time we got into a DVD player bus, but sadly never got to see any movie. The journey was rickety, but we did not feel as we slept all thru the journey. When we woke at 11am we could see the gopuras of the temple.

Kanchipuram, is a dusty town with more temples that even the localite can visit. Every gully, street, nook and corner has a temple. One end of the city is dedicated to the Shiva temples, the other corner to Vishnu and in between acting as a De-Militarized zone is the shakti temple of Kanchi. To complete the shakti temple round, one has to see Madurai Meenakshi, Kanchi Kaamaakshi & Kashi Vishaalaakshi. Of course there are the smaller ones like Kollur Mukambika, Mysore Chamundi, Vaishnodevi, etc. The triad mentioned above was our goal.

Autos are huge problem in Kanchi. Everywhere you go they follow you arnd, they offer ever decreasing prices for places which are just 1km away. Finally I had run them off by saying that we had decided to walk 100km in two days as our obeisance to Kaamaakshi. This drove them off. Biju responded in irritation at all the drivers.

Our first visit was to the K K temple. The main one in the middle of the town. The dome of the temple is covered in the gold plated copper. There is a very poorly maintained kalyani (holy pond) in the temple. Saw 2 guys washing their bodies in the kalyaani. A lot of gopuras surround the main temple. We clicked photos in abandon; biju and tekulaman went into the temple to pay a visit to the god. One feature of interest was the pillar mantapam, with beautiful carving; but pathetic maintenance all the same. As usual in the Indian temple there are a lot of “courting” scenes in conjoined position as is required by the tantric rules of temple building.

We walked on from the temple to the Shanmugham temple. A relatively modern temple, with a lot of peacock scultptures. It was pleasant to watch parrots nesting in the nooks and gables of the temple and constrasting with the inanimate peacocks. From there we did a pradakshina of the whole city coming back to the Kamaakshi temple and hence on the busy bus-stand area. Time for food, and we entered HSB Saravana bhavan for a traditional tamil iyengar lunch. It was very satisfying.

Kanchi is famous mostly for it’s saris. Silk ones with complex brocades and zaris. Have heard that some of the saris are even sold by weight owing to the amount of zari (a mixture of silk, twisted wires of silver/copper and with gold paint). Ms JJ’s saris for her adopted son’t wedding went into lakhs. We hopped into a auto to reach the saree bazaar. This area teems with a lot of shops, selling saris. After much deliberation and walking to-fro across the bazaar some 3 times, we decided to enter a shop and try our hand at women wear.

Saree buying is another of the mystic arts; similar to unix programming. You never what you are getting, until you go home and hear comments like “this sari is the color of an elephant”, “Looks like gutter water”, “too much design”, “too less design”. On top of this you also need to be careful not to get some cheap stuff which is passed of as silk. To men’s eyes even nylon is like silk; for that matter anything which shines can pass off as silk. The salesperson spreads hundreds of sarees in front of you, one piled upon the other; all price ranges from Rs200/- to Rs10000/- was spread in front of us. We decided on our price range and started selecting sarees which twinkled before us. I decided to play safe and go for cotton saris with a lot of folklorish design. Finally we ended up with Tekula 2 saris, me 3 saris and biju 1 sari. The salesperson gave us a discount of 30% (later found that first he gives you 20% and on top of that 10%, which is lesser than 30%) and we were very happy. Biju insisted on a “round” figure and got some more 100/- knocked off.

Varadaraj perumal (Vishnu) temple lies a stones throw away from the saree shops. It’s a big temple, with a high gopura, a more interesting pillar mantapam. The main temple is in the form of a fort, one high wall within another. The sanctum is dark with a foreboding and huge idol of the lord. Going around the idol you are surprised to find another door at the back, which leads u up a flight of stairs. Here you find the acclaimed Golden lizard or the Bangaru-Palli. If any day you have a lizard fall on you, you need to go to kanchi and touch the the bangaru-palli and your paapa will be erased from your personal history. There are two lizards, one with a gold plate and another silver plated, to witness the fact that you are touching the lizard you have silver plated sun and moon. All these are not on the ground, but interestingly affixed to a beam on the roof, to simulate a live lizard. The walls of the temple are full of paintings, which sadly (as everywhere in kanchi) are fading due to lack of care and maintenance. Coming out we walked around the 100 pillared mandapam, supposedly carved out of a single stone and joined. A necklace is carved out of stone with no joints, a distinctive southern temple feature; Tekula gaped at the necklace and appreciated the sculptors.

Back to Chennai, the task was to find a bus. We had a panicky time, trying to get a bus to Chennai; there was none, most of them were headed to other places. The only bus we could finally manage to get was a ramshackle dabba which could pass for a bus. The journey was arduous and bumpy, with water seeping in due to rain; biju’s shoulder was all wet and was on the verge of freezing into a ice clod. We reachecd Koyambedu and thence on Chennai central in time to catch the train.

Our meal was burgers and biryaani from Marrybrowns. We hopped onto the III AC coach on the Mysore express. Bill settlement was supposed to be taken up in the train, but finding everyone turning off the lights to call an early night, even we decided to call it a day, to “rejuvenate” ourselves and get nostalgic.

D-Day “+1” (Mon Nov 8, 2004)

Reached bangalore early in the morning. The trip was big fun, lots of experiences, bohomie and gunh-ho. Thanks to everyone who helped in making the trip so “rejuvenating”.

Thanjavurunalli thuntaata

Author: Raghu with Santhosh

This time around the elite D club decided it had to be a heritage visit. Time to do some culture jaunt.

So, Thanjavur it was, terrific Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. A demon by the name of Tanjan-an asura lends its name to the town of Thanjavur. As per the legend the last wish of the demon was that the place should be named after him, Sri Anandavalli Amman and Sri Neelamegapperumal granted it.

The travel team comprised of QQ (Santhosh G R), NagiD (Nagaraj C), and Mandakini man (Sanjay Subramanyam) and Djinn (H K Raghunandan).

We boarded the Mysore -Thanjavur Express in Bangalore at 7pm on the 1st of October, 04. In the train Nagi talked at length with his beau almost throughout the night over the phone, 3 hours on the phone with nothing but “ene, yaake, en aaythe, yaake sumne iddeeyaa” and other inanities. We were surprised to find that Thanjavur express has no pantry coach. We had to subsist on a lemon rice diet and coffee that night.

Day 1 (by Santhosh & Raghu)

We reached Thanjavur around 6 am to find Sanjayo waiting for us. Seems Sanjay landed here early in the morning from Madurai.

We took a walk towards Hotel Oriental Towers, some 2 minutes away from the station. QQ and NagiD insisted that they would not stay in any place without AC & TV. American returnees you see!!! Even with AC & TV the place was not enticing. Costly and too foreigner friendly. We found that it was not really worth staying put there. We walked again for about 15-20 minutes towards the center of city. We were in search of Hotel Parisuddam. On the way we saw a lot of posters with advice on health. Very good SADE inspired photos, asking people not to poop on roads, sweep the poop out and what not. Further on there was garments shop called “All xxxx” which used the images of a church, temple & mosque to advertise itself and propagate communal harmony. Gazing at the photos and the wall posters for movies with scantily clad women, d_men overshot the hotel and ended up in the center of the city. We had to walk back another 5 minutes to reach Parisuddam. Parisuddam seemed to be more foreigner friendly (i.e. more bucks for the same AC/TV room). We turned back from there again towards the city center. It was a good morning walk thru the city.

Finally we settled for a low profile Hotel-karthik. This was centrally located and situated besides the old city bus stand. On popular demand we checked into a double bed AC room with TV.

As soon as we were in the room; it was pants down and poop time! QQ took his book into the shit room as is his habit. We suggested NagiD to read Sade and broaden his horizon. QQ asked DJinn if the toilet smelt of his poop before going in. Everyone had a good laugh remembering MandakiniMan and his aversion to enter the toilet when the smell from the previous users poop lingered around.

Ablutions complete; we went down to the inhouse tiffin room. We gorged on a large breakfast consisting of idlies, vadas, dosas, and pongal. The white coconut chutney was delicious. This was served in a small quantity on the plate. We asked for more cups of chutneys. All Tamil restaurants have an aversion to server chutney, you need to coax, cajole and then finally threaten to get a whole cup.

Our first place of visit for the day was kaleidoscopic Kumbakonam. Located about 45 kms from Thanjavur.

We boarded the bus at around 9 am. It was one hell of a "standing" ride in the loud stereophonic bus. Point to note; this DVD coach had 2 TV screens. The stereo system also had Phillips tweeter boxes strategically placed to give the best :-)) "loud" sound. As before QQ and NagiD refused to enter any bus without DVD. Sad, but the DVD was not turned on for the whole journey. QQ admired the deft driver who could negotiate a sharp curve while changing the cassette in the stereo deck. NagiD and QQ discussed about how good old Indian bus drivers can compete at Nascar given an opportunity.

In an hour's time we landed in Kumbakonam. We were greeted by a cool spell of rains.

The erotic sculptures at the Sarangapani, Kumbeswarar, Nageswara and Ramaswamy temples left us amazed.

Sample these;

a. Carvings of a guy balanced with head on the ground and the female sitting on top of him with their legs for support. PHEW!!

b. Community sex featuring a female in the buff "servicing" 3 gentlemen with their visible tools.

c. A cool dude with a clown like cap on his head (as we called him :-)) perched on the protruding legs of 2 females on either side. His hands are in a spread across "Yeow" position. To imagine the “Yeow” position, just think about all the hip-hop stars using their fingers to say “yeah, baby”.

d. Krishna perched on top of a tree with his legs wide open and with an expression indicating absolute lust. A nude gopika sthree is trying to climb the tree and has wrapped one of her legs around the tree. Seems like she’s trying to scratch herself against the tree.

e. A guy humping a female from behind and the other guy with his huge tool wrapping her thigh.

We went inside the Sarangapani temple (named after the Sarangam bow held by Vishnu). This is the biggest temple in Kumbakonam. The god with the same name as the temple

is seen in a reclining pose (similar to sreeranganatha as in srirangapatnam) with his head slightly raised. He had raised his head bcos an earlier pujari wanted to have a better view of the lord.

The sanctum has been built in the form of an exquisitely carved chariot. Sarangapani has driven the chariot from heaven in haste to meet his love. The temple depicts the chariot being stopped. A pair of horses in the lead and elephants at the back are straining to stop the chariot. Like modern jets there is an elephant tied up in the reverse direction which acts like the parachute used to stop planes. It has an uttara dwara and daksheena dwara each open only six months in a year.

While coming out from the garbhagudi we were accosted by a mysterious character. He was hell bend on taking us somewhere. Finally he took us to a dungeon garbha gudi where "Tirupati" Pataala Sreenivasar is present. The view of the “pataala” was accompanied by the character muttering “tirupati pataala srinivasan” almost a 100 times.

There is also a Tank at the back of the temple. This is where the resident goddess Komalavalli was born.

It rained in continuous drizzles as we trudged on through the slushy roads.

Then it was lunch time to visit the world famous Mami Mess. This was closed for a week, so we were told as “Mami” was out on a piligrimage, just like us. Disappointed we turned back (but we clicked photos before this place!!) and entered the second best eating place in Kumbakonam - Venkataramana mess. This is a nice traditional place; meals served on plantain leaves. This was a one sumptuous South Indian lunch that we had for the day. Subsequently we had delicious "golmi" halwa for desserts. Nagi was smiling at the prospect of eating this soft tasty halwa, he was reminded of a soft part in a woman’s body which had the same softness as the halwa. He was chuckling to himself in sweet nostalgia.

We walked around the streets of Kumbakonam and found the famous mathematician Sreenivasan Ramanujam's house in a small bylane. This place is now a tourist

attraction. Seems he used to gaze out his bedroom window at the people walking on the streets and work on his numbers and equations. Photography is banned here and QQ & Mandakini were disappointed.

It was around 2:30 - 3pm as we walked our way out to find a cab to go back to Thanjavur. Somehow this didn’t work out because the taxiwallahs demanded too much.

We boarded a TNSTC bus. In the bus we harangued Sanjay on traditions and the fact that one of our illustrious but tradition-less sons might ensnare his daughter and marry her. He seemed to be adamant not to let his daughter marry any one of our sons. :=))

It was 5 pm when we reached Thanjavur and decided it was time to visit the Brihadeeshwara temple. We found this was one huge structure as we walked inside its ramparts. Built by Raja raja Chola, this is a World Heritage site.

This temple has one big Nandi, the bull facing the Shiva linga shrine. This bull looks a bit demure and looks smaller in size compared to the Nandi at Chamundi betta in Mysore. The Shiva linga is around 15 feet tall inside the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

The temple gopuram has been built in such a way that its shadow does not fall on the ground, but later found on the net that the shadow of only the dome does not fall on the ground and everything else falls..

Nagi as usual became oblivious of our presence and got attached to the phone. BSNL would have surely made a fortune by now.

Meanwhile our Mandakini was busy ogling a foreigner called Aileen and cavorting with her. He asked her about all the places she had been. Sad that he forgot to recommend our beautiful home Mysore to her. (Later while walking towards poompuhar we destined to bump into her and her boyfren quite often. It was here that Sanjay told us about her ;-))

After a small stroll in the temple premises, we sat on the steps of the Nataraja temple.

We came across an old man~mendicant seated there & singing some really nice Tamil compositions. His audience was a lone guy. He seemed to ask the old about his whereabouts. The old man snapped back saying ~ quote "Why do you want to know about me, Listen to my songs rather" ~ unquote.

We sat down right next to the old man. He recited the Srivalli-Karthikeyan katha in his sweet dulcet tones. This was one superb rendition.

He also sang kaa-kaa-kaa from the old movie Parasakthi starring Sivaji ganesan. Some 30-45 minutes rolled by and we gave him a small token of our appreciation and bid adieu to the mendicant. We then slowly filed out of the temple.

We walked along the streets hoping to visit Poom-puhar - TN handicrafts emporium. To our dismay, we found that it was closed. We stopped by a roadside juice shop and drank Paneer-Soda. This was to later become our favourite drink for the whole trip.

Dinner was a big affair with kerala parothas, dosas, utthappams topped by strong Coffee. And of course the white chutney.

NagiD and DJinn wanted to see a “pondy” movie in one of the “pondy” theatres Rani. They infact stood in front of a poster and started asking passers by about the name of the theatre in the revealing poster. QQ & Mandakini poured water over their desires.

We got back to our AC room at around 10 pm in the night. We felt hot and sticky. Thanjavur was humid allright. We put on the TV and hit the sack. NagiD laid bare his mind; thoughts ~ escapades to Quli qutub and QQ was sagely nodding and advising him considering the fact that Nagi is getting married on Feb,05. This went on till

2 am. QQ was heard commenting on how difficult life (night life in particular) has become for him after Madhu left for the US.

Sanjay was tired and was asleep in sometime. He had to catch the train back home~read Hyderabad the next day early in the morning.

The whole night was spent in watching TV, commenting on life, universe and everything and QQ complaining about the prickliness of DJinn, nagi, the bed and finally the rug. He was found undressing and dressing, removing his shirt, putting them back on again in order to get some winks.. but to no avail.

Day 2 (by Santhosh)

Day 2 started very early with Mandakini leaving early in the morning. He forgot to take the dates he had bought the previous day, and forgot to give us the sweets he had bought in madurai.

QQ was the first to wake after this at 7:30, to poop and woke up the others. The team changed rooms preferring a Non-AC room as we were not going to stay for the night. Of course the preference was still to get a room with a TV.

The new room had the loo and bath in the same place unlike the luxurious AC room where they were separate. NagiD and DJinn took forever to bathe, and after bathing half an hour was spent watching tamil songs on TV. The 3 were found commenting about the depth and talent of tamil actors, music directors and the like.

Breakfast was at hotel karthik, with the same fights for white chutney and finally drowned in some dark strong coffee.

After breakfast, we decided to hire a car and visit places nearby. Velankanni, chidambaram and swamimalai were some of the choices but had to be dropped due to tie constraints. Finally we decided to go to srirangam, trichy (why later). Going by sanjay’s techinique of estimating the taxi amount ( Rs.200 + 4*kms) we came up with Rs. 1000 for the whole trip. We were surprised when the taxi driver quoted Rs.800 and could not get ideas to negotiate further. We piled into the car with nagiD in the front.

The ride to sriranjam was pleasant and meandered thru bush, brambles and fields. A lot of topics were discussed, with NagiD spending some more time on his BSNL phone calling up his love.

Finally we reached srirangam passing a huge bridge over river cauvery. Srirangam surprisingly is also supposed to be a island on river cauvery and has Vishnu in a reclining pose similar to our srirangapatna. The gopura of the temple is one of the biggest. The car had to pass thur a lot of bylanes to reach the back of the temple. Most of the sculpture in srirangam were of decent outlook with no kumbakonamish elegance. The main temple was huge, with the biggest garuda statue. The pillars were intricately carved but due to lack of maintenance and the oil from the temple were losing their beauty. Photography inside the temple was with a fee.

Proceeding towards the garbha gudi, we found a serpentine Q to enter the sanctum. Even the special entrance was teeming with people. A watchman was selectively letting people enter the sanctum thru the exit!!! DJinn tried in vain to enter the sanctum with this watchman’s help. The watchman was not willing for money, but needed a letter from the temple manager which could be got by donating around Rs. 2500 to the temple.

Coming out with a sad face DJinn was accosted by a tout who promised to take us inside the temple for a fee. We trudged back to enter the sanctum.

The touring entourage split here. QQ did not want to go into the sanctum with the help of a tout, who might not even be reliable. NagiD & Djinn planned to stay back till 1:30 PM to enter while QQ came out of the temple and proceeded towards the huge gopura/vimana to take pictures.

Finally NagiD and DJinn also decided not to enter the sanctum. This was due to the crass nature of bribing to see the god and also bcos the tout was fidgeting to help them enter.

The team regrouped and proceeded towards trichy. The main reason for going to trichy was due to NagiD. One of the erstwhile love of NagiD is from trichy and he wanted to pay homage to his lost love by visiting trichy. Trichy had an amazing church (which we could not visit) and the famous RockFort temple for vinayaka called ucchipillaiyer koil. We had sumptuous sugarcane juice with nagiD commenting that he has survived almost 3-4 days on sugarcane. More talk from him was interrupted because of a missed call from mandya-love to which he pleaded us to let him talk. We talked thru the main bazaar to reach the foothill of rockfort. We passed thru many “AC” jewellery & clothing shops. This is a very unique aspect of both trichy and thanjavur (maybe the other cities too). Only shops which were “AC” were filled with customers, the others more dead than alive. Passing my these shops was a pleasure as one could feel the cool air rushing out into the hot and humid street.

We climbed the “inner staircase” of the rockfort. We had to pay to take our camera to the top. There was a very obstinate watchman who would examine your purse too thinking that you were hiding your camera. NagiD procrastinated about the fate if he had an “erect” tool and the watchman confused it for the camera.

Reaching the top of the temple, we were elated. You could see the meandering river and the gopuras of sriranga. We were also delighted to find sculptures of two monkeys doing it in “dog like” position and a sculpture of a couple in the most complex of asanas doing the ting-ting thing. After some photo sessions we trudged back to our car. Before riding back we had one more sugarcane juice plus a unique sherbet with bright colors and nimbu.

DJinn and QQ had a slight nap on the return trip. NagiD seized the moment to call up mandya again, in peace and filled his girl with courage to face life. The car was stopped for DJinn to take a leak. QQ asked NagiD not to take the leak as they could do in terrific thanjavur. Just a minute after this QQ was found going out of the car for a leak which distressed NagiD very much and which he recounted a lot of times.

We asked the driver to drop us in the Thanjavur palace. NagiD bought a flute and we enjoyed some more nimbu drink. We also enjoyed gazing into the kaleidoscope for sale.

Thanjavur palace is a beautiful with a watch tower and gopura. A lot of nataraja copper statues are displayed. This palace was built by Raja Serfoji of the marata clan. Serfoji’s descendants who came under british rule look all too familiar to our own Mysore rajahs with the same girth and lackadaisical looks.

First we climbed the gopura. The gopura was in sections with each section beginning in a different place. NagiD and DJinn were delighted with this structure and commented that this was used by the raja to make love in myriad positions and also to chase his harem around the building making them confused. The view from the top was fantastic. While coming down from the gopura we stopped to gaze at the skeletal remains of a whale (blue??) washed ashore.

We had a look at all the nataraja, parvati, saranga, Vishnu copper sculptures. Most of the women deity lacked any upper wear. Some of the deity sported a strip as upper wear. However the artist was very imaginative to portray the nipple of the deity peaking out from under the strip a.la. our wonderbra. We talked about the inspiration to the artist.

On the outside of the palace is a watch/pleasure tower. To reach the top one has to climb thru a stair case in pitch darkness. Our mobiles came handy to see the steps. This climb to the top is thru a spiral staircase and it was a whirlwind experience to reach the top and have a view of the countryside again. We regretted not having time to visit many of the other gopuras we could see from the top.

Coming down we saw the palace museum, the palace durbar hall, lots of large copper vessels, musical instruments.

It was time to go back to the hotel. We passed by many handicrafts emporiums and regretted not having time to shop there. We packed our bags at the hotel, saw some more tamil songs. Nagi was surprised to find his soap cover to have only water. We ate at karthik hotel, with some more delicious white chutney and proceeded towards the railway station.

We had III AC tickets for our return journey. But the AC was not working in the train for some time. We appreciated Indian railways for providing us with bedsheets and “dimbu” in the train. NagiD hooked on to his mobile again while DJinn and QQ started reading books on thanjavur and kumbakonam. A brief stopover at Trichy where we tried to get some food in vain and we hopped into our berths for the journey back “our home away from home – bangi”