May 16 2008 - A Day to Remember

I stepped out of the ‘royal’ Sharma travels bus (shucks.. never take it man.. neva eva.. It’s the only legal form of Suicide in India) and took in my first breath of Madurai in many years. Strange that a whole half of my ancestry hail from Madurai, and I’ve been there only a couple of times before. I always had this ‘peelings’ (feeling) about Madurai. This was where my mom was born… and she spent her childhood there. If I tell you she’d told me (plus my uncle + his mom) close to a hundred stories about Madurai, that would be a literal understatement.

I went to Madurai to attend the wedding of a friend’s brother (u’d find “Manage Bharathi” in the Blogs I read column ;)) and landed in Madurai a good two hours after the ceremony, thanks to ‘Sharma’. Spent the rest of the morning at the wedding eating (read - whenever the gang wasn’t teasing Munish). I was also a silent spectator to this discussion on World’s greatest movies led by Ivan ji (read – The Old man of CIT on the blogs I read) and finally came back to the room where we stayed by 2 in the afternoon. As you can expect, everyone hit the pillow soon after. There were these 3 of us who couldn’t get any sleep. The aforesaid ‘anniversary’ thought kept coming back to me, with an additional statement ‘Go somewhere, go somewhere’. Probably the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. That is one of those times when I forget who’s around, what I am talking, where I am heading and a lot more questions that’d interest a psychiatrist deeply. The two of them were talking about going to the infamous Meenakshi Amman Temple which was just about a few hundred metres from that place.

I heard someone speaking, ‘U comin?’

‘Deal.’

So, the trio (Saswat, Santosh & I) started off at close to four o clock. Just as we were walking, S & S started talking about Indian History, Old Indian greatness, Combodia, Ang kor Wat, Politics, Atheism, monotheism etc… All in a ‘space’ of 500 metres, and we weren’t walking slow either. Parallelly, a lot of questions were running on my mind about weddings, Politics, Poverty, Believing etc.. When I mentally asked a question to myself, “Will I be stuck in this %^#% world of IT for ever?”, Santosh said, “No, not more than a few months” to some question Sahu (read - Saswat) asked. I pushed it off as a mere coincidence. Then, my thoughts moved over to the Generator-Overlooker-Destroyer concept and I asked myself, “Am I a believer or am I not?” And I looked at the Gopuram of the temple and said, “I need an answer..”. Just then, Sahu said, “All those great kings were such Believers, weren’t they? Otherwise who would build these fabulous temples?? They believed that there was this force above them..”. ‘Coincidence 2’, I said to myself.

We were told that the temple opens only after half an hour from then, when we started from the room, just as I told myself, ‘Everything will fall into place when the time comes..’ (you can take it in any context). Though I thought of something else, and had wondered how it went as an answer to the question. Coincidence 3, may be? We were leaving our slippers with the counter fellow outside, some guy was saying into his phone, “Kovil thirandhu ivalo neram aachu? Enga irukinga?” (It’s been some time since the temple opened. Where are you?).

We entered through the West entrance, ( Santosh so confidently said it was the North entrance when we were returning and got us properly drenched in the rain.. ) and had to walk to the original north entrance to enter the temple. The Climate was supremely hot till then, and the floor was so hot that even one of those stones would have enough heat in it to boil a litre of milk. I wondered aloud, “Doesn’t it rain in this furnace of a place?” We went in. I’d read someone’s blog on how he had to go round and round the temple a few times before he found the sannidhi (shrine?) of Meenakshi Amman. And I thought, “let’s see how difficult it is..” True, we went to Shiva’s shrine, the hall of thousand pillars and we came to the same place twice, but we couldn’t find Her Shrine. I stopped Santosh from asking anyone else, saying it’s for us to find. I ended up in one of the exits when I finally gave in and told Santosh, “Alright It’s difficult. Let’s ask som..” when I saw the Shrine. Straight from that door.. straight in. I just started walking in and on the second door, we came to face this Golden Lotus pond. I felt the atmosphere change immediately. I suddenly brought my two hands together as if in a prayer (unintentionally). I realized it a moment later and was kind of embarrassed for the believer that I believe I am. (‘How much of a believer?’ I said that’s another issue!! Not now, ok??)

Finally, I saw the deity. Believed to be the most beautiful (statue of a) Goddess in all of Hindu Mythology. Before that, I personally thought nothing could match the grace, beauty and the magnetism of Sharadhambal of Sringeri, who I see as a pencil sketch at home (courtesy, my artist brother). I was thinking just that when I entered the shrine. “Of all days… A Friday..”, sighed Santosh. I looked into see close to 500 people inside. There was no way I was going to get in. Even the ‘special’ queue (which according to Sahu was the bane of India) was brimming. “Let’s see if there’s any way we can catch a glimpse from outside.. We cannot go in.. No way. We won’t make it for the wedding reception if we stay.”, said Santosh. ‘We will go in and we will see the Amman (Goddess)’, I thought. As I kept looking at the entrance and stood in awe, someone came from nowhere and told Sahu, “Give me 100. I’ll take you three inside..”. ‘Give it’, I thought, though I said nothing. Sahu, who was supposedly dead-against special queues, gave him his hundred in a matter of seconds. We went in.

I was inside , as close as we can ever get to the Goddess (read – 50 metres), but I couldn’t see anything but the lamps at the end of the pragaaram (last room where the goddess is). ‘I am here to see you.. but I can’t. Oh puhleez, some light..’ and immediately they showed the Aarathi. I saw the face of the idol, and I was lost. 

“I give in, you win”, I said, to noone in particular.

Suddenly, the outer wall of the innermost sanctum (hee hee) was as if, it was cleaned with water from above. It was a storm (complete with hailstones, I learnt later). We went back to the pond, and sat down in a few minutes of silence (were the others also deep in thought??) and after that, talked about rain, music, took a few pics and Santosh even tried to sing Amrithavarshini Raga, which I promptly caught on my mobile.

The General consensus was to spend some more time there till the rain stops, though I must admit that the real reason was that none of us wanted to leave the place. We stayed there for twenty more minutes before deciding to take the rain on….

And waded through 2 feet high water for the next 20 minutes as we tottered back to our room.

Though I have not described even One of my questions here directly, that day answered so many questions that had been bothering me for years...

When i told my mum about the sudden hailstorm later, all she said was, "What else do you expect when YOU go to a temple???"

How much of a believer i am, you should have a guess now.. or don't u?