Of mallipoos and Sungudis

Yes you brilliant soul who got the hint from the title, indeed i am refering to the temple town of மதுரை (OK i wonder if that was spelt right!! )

Thats the place where i "celebrated" independence day this year. WHY did we go there you ask? Well simple reason really. ( as my dad explained) We've been to diff places in India, but never really explored our own backyard so of we were to the town of madurai!

The weather i must say was a refreshing change from the scorchin sun in chennai ( Its funny how jus a few lattitudes can change the temperature so drastically)

Compare for yourself. THIS is what the sky looked like in chennai the day we left

and THIS was Madurai when we landed there ( time difference, 45 minutes)

But why talk bout weather and waste time when there are far more interesting things to talk bout!

Well yes Madurai is filled with temples and smells basically of mallipoo but it sure is an enchanting place.

The "travel schedule" was planned by my mum so obviously the main thing on the agenda was go to AS many temples as possible, though i whined at that time, i'm glad i finally gave in to my mom's wishes.

First of course was the Madurai Meenakshi temple, i'd heard a lot about the 4 gopurams ( one for each direction) and was really looking forward to go look at the real thing, sadaly as they were renovating the temple, the gopurams were completely covered in thatch.

But on the bright side, i got a cycle rikshaw ride to the temple :)

The old man who was riding the cycle rikshaw cudnt STOP talkin and it was quite entertaining as he tried to switch between english, hindi and tamil wondering which language we spoke cos my mum nd me seemed to makin exchanges in all three languages.

So went the first day visiting various temples in and around madurai. Oh by the time we went to this one temple, it was awefully late and the main enterance had closed, one priest ( who was done with his work for the day)took pity on us and took us through the back entrance of the temple, by the temple pond, through the temple kitchen and finally into the main sanctum..

The next day was much more fun when we drove to Rameshwaram.The climate was jus PERFECT. the temples THERE, were far more emptier and less noisy ( well most of them) and of course the MONKEYS!

Well though i'm sure there were far more interesting tales to tell of the trip from a travellers point of view, i don recall enough to write about over here.. though there was this temple ( a murugan temple) where a man had a spear through his tongue and was walkin on wooden slippers which were embedded with nails (OUCH!)

Watever said and done, i did quite enjoy the trip, mostly cos it gave me time to spend with mum nd dad( and THAT doesnt happen often)

oh nd the BEST part of the trip? the flight bak to chennai!

the madurai airport is TINY! its like a house, i mean the waiting launge is the size of a classroom.

our flight was wonderfully late by 3.5 hours nd my mum nd i were whiling away time passin comments on how atrocious the king fisher nd deccan crew looked :P

Finally when we were in the flight, there was this COMLETE wierdo sittin in front of us. He was listening to songs (on his i-phone)from all possible sanjay leela bansali movies( not like there are too many) in the loudest possible volume. (TRUST ME! everybody on the flight cud here it!!!)

so there we are, 100s of feet above the ground, in extreeeeeeeeeeeeeemely bad weather with the plane under terrible turbulence, so much so that it feels like the "roller coster" in MGM,with lightning flashing near our windows and all the ladies at the maximum of their bhakthi, when the air hostess walks upto this wierdo and asks him to turn his phone off as it may interfere with the plane's mechanism.

and Mr. wierdo in return argues about the phone being in "flight mode" nd it giving sadass dialogues such as " madam theeese is not JEST ye PHONE yit eees an i- PHONE" for some reason that reminded me of the rajnikanth dialogues( remember the way he says "yen vazhi THANEEE vazhi")

nd the argument continues, nd since the lights keep goin on and off cos of bad weather and i was unable to read a book, i decided to be entertained by them.

so finally after (20 whole minutes) of the lady explaing the plane mechanism and the guy showin of his "not JEST ye phone" and its features, she finally got up, walked upto her bag nd pulled out a rules book. The rule to switch of phones was mentioned in BOLD, nd since Mr wierdo got a bulb, he asked for a complaint sheet ( to save watever lil maanam he had left)

nd THEN ladies and gentlemen, started wat i call "the essay writing competition" no seriously, he exhausted the entire sheet and asked for TWO extra sheets of paper, underlying here and there, writing with 2 colours (alternating with blue and black, black being used for the IMPORTANT words)

man was it fun to watch his expressions as he wrote..