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
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
Day 1 (by Santhosh & Raghu)
We reached Thanjavur around
We took a walk towards
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
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.
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
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
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
The
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 
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
Sanjay was tired and was asleep in sometime. He had to catch the train back home~read
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
QQ was the first to wake after this at
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
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
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”
