2/13/06: Here’s Mudduh’ Your Eye!

Another day, another 4:15 am wakeup call, for our hour trip back to the Chennai airport and our flight to Madurai, the temple city. Following an unpleasant recycling experience for Rick in a Chennai airport Turkish toilet (no photos included), we seized the opportunity to consume three breakfasts, a packed meal consumed in the airport car, a hot meal of dhosas on the 50-minute Jet Airways flight, and a bountiful buffet at our Madurai Hotel, the Taj Garden Retreat, with a beautiful vista of the city. Unfortunately, the room and service quality were no “treat,” nor was our guide Milton Powers. However, the palace and temple were quite a treat for our weary eyes.

We got our first taste of Milton when, at the suggestion of A&P, we inquired about visiting a weavers village near Madurai. Between glances at his watch, he assured us that no such villages existed, before stopping by a tank (enormous man-made pool where they recently floated some shrines during a local festival), where some local weavers were drying 100 meter-long threads, stretched out alongside the pool on wooden stands. Interesting, but we suspect this is not what the Sinhas had in mind.

We then stopped by the 17th century Tirumalai Nayak Palace, home of Madurai’s nightly music and light show. Milton wasn’t very interested in or excited by the palace, and tried to set a Guinness World record for speeding through the site. The only Guinness we were interested was a stout. Nevertheless, Anne and I observed a new architectural form for this trip, and were impressed by the vaulted ceilings, well-preserved murals, and elaborate carvings, as we played catch-up with our guide, clearly inspired by the speed skaters in Turin.

The short trip to the splendid Meenakshi Temple (named after Shiva’s wife) was a bit chaotic, not surprisingly, because the entire city was built around the temple, with all five major roads spoking out from its central location (clogged main arteries seem to be a recurring theme for this trip☺). The temple’s roots date back 2000 years, although the main construction took place in the 17th and 18th century, and the exterior painting was a 20th century touch-up. After shedding our sandals, we gazed up at the first of 12 temple towers (gopurams, temples, purams, shiva …according to Adam Sandler, India has to be at least as Jewish as Harrison Ford and Paul Newman☺). And oh what a magnificent gopuram it was, rising 50 meters into the sky, every square millimeter adorned with brightly colored carvings of people, gods, 10-armed demons, and an assortment of real and mythical animals. WOW!

Once inside the walls, the temple grounds, covering approximately 4 football fields, contained an assortment of pillared halls, shrines, and statues, as well as flower markets (for offerings to the gods) and handicraft stalls. One could easily spend a week exploring the temple’s architecture, carvings, shrines, and stories. Milton was intent on delivering a highly condensed Cliff notes version in 45 minutes, eliciting the emotional attachment of a Vulcan. As it turns out, one underlying problem was that Milton is a Christian, with limited understanding, some disdain, and little empathy for the 10,000 Hindus a day who come to worship at this holy temple. In contrast, after two weeks with Sunny, Anne and I had grown to love the Hindu culture, and refused to rush, asking as many questions as possible. Shoeless and undeterred, we spent time exploring the theater (Milton suggested we skip this masterpiece) with 985 stone pillars, each individually carved in a separate form, with standing, sitting, smiling Ganeshes, the goddess of love, and half lion-half elephant creatures. Rick received a blessing from a local elephant for 10 Rs, collected with the pachyderm’s 20,000-muscle probiscus.

After attempting to zip through the temple in record time, Milton followed script (Lonely Planet warning) by “escorting” us to the roof of local handicrafts shop, allegedly for the panoramic temple view, which was quite impressive, even in the flat mid-day sun. He showed no interest, but did enthusiastically encourage us to peruse the merchandise, expecting us to generate commissions for him. We not only dashed his hopes, but also dashed out of this tourist trap as soon as we finished our free cardamon, cinammon, and saffron tea. To get even, he brought us to two more of these inappropriate shops after we asked to visit local shops to buy small gifts and silk shirts. However, his worst shopping referral was for pharmaceuticals, when he sent us to a grungy hole in the wall with dusty boxes and no English.

We returned to the Taj Garden Retreat for a bit of r&r and dinner, before heading back to the temple procession, scheduled for 9:15 pm, according to Misinformed Milton, who dismissed the evening festivity as a meaningless tourist attraction. We, in turn, dismissed Milt as a worthless tourist unattraction. Milton further earned his tip (zero rupees, zero dollars and no sense) by insisting we must be completely barefoot—no Lufthansa first class booties allowed, despite the one-block walk through the city before we entered the temple. Apparently, other guides forgot to tell their 200 tourists about this rule, as their feet were all protected from the grimy floors by socks!

Each evening, a troupe of priests make their way from the Shiva shrine to the Meenakshi shrine lugging a Shiva statue on a chariot, accompanied by a cacophonous marching band in dhotis and face paint. You see, the God with the Third Eye, despite the occasional marital tiff, prefers to spend evenings with his honey in the friendly confines of Parvathi’s shrine, a few hundred yards down the hall and around the corner. Naturally, tonight, there was a pre-ritual parade at 9:30, where some lesser statues from Shiva’s shrine got a free music ride. This warm-up to the main attraction came as a big surprise to Milton (and us), but was interesting nonetheless, and enough of an experience for Anne and me to bid adieu to Milton once and for all, rather than stand around the temple until 11pm.