2011 India, Madurai Temple

6th March 2011

We woke up bleary eyed to the alarm at around 6 am as we approached Madurai. We passed throughout suburbs which looked quite flash compared to Chennai, small but well built and clean houses each with a small plot of land. The inner suburbs more of the familiar mix of poverty and better mixed together. Luckily the train stopped so that we were right next to the over-bridge to the exit, saving us a bit of walk in what was already a hot day that early in the morning. We found a place to leave the luggage, and pandered over what to do to find a place to stay. In the end we decided that the Madurai temple was probably the main attraction and that we only needed the day there. So we decided to book a train further south asap, which turned out to be around 4 am the next morning. 



This made timing a bit difficult in terms of accommodation, but Eunmi found that the 'retiring room' in the station was only 45 Rp for 24 hrs and was a large fan room with a good sized bed and its own bathroom, which was cheaper than most of the hotels anyway. Nice one missus! 
Best of all it was on the station where the train was leaving from at the ungodly hour.



We then grabbed one autorickshaw to go down to the temple(30 Rp) through the main shopping street which was mainly full of electronic shops and we were dropped close by as that part of the street was closed. 

Followed everyone else round the barriers through the closed off area.


 One of the huge temple towers loomed at the end of the street. These Hindu temple towers are packed full of brightly coloured animations of the various rather hideous looking mythical characters, only lightened by a few buxom  female characters. 




We had to go down from the temple gate a bit to leave our shoes and I had to put some long pants on, otherwise you can't enter the temple. You have to pass through a metal detector and have a bag search on the way in as well. Probably due to some of the tit for tat temple attacks between Hindus & Muslims over recent years.
We spent a bit of time in the covered walkway area at the start watching & feeding some squirrels and rats. 


Into the temple we found it has a large sunken water feature in the middle with a huge golden lotus in it. The surrounding temple buildings are full of elaborately carved statuary and very colourful painting. 
Almost every pillar & a bit of wall space has little statues covered into it, many that have little devotional candles burning have been anointed with sweet smelling oils and various coloured powders.



We moved around to another section where there is supposed to be a procession with an Elephant. We had some nice snacks there as we waited, I really liked this sweet ball that had a lovely gingerly flavour.
The procession turned out to be some guys carrying an elephant statue in a little shrine borne on shoulder(pampluse?). The whole thing was covered in engraved an beaten silver. Several musicians accompanied it out of a part of the temple that is not accessible to foreigners, around one of the bigger devotional statues and then on around a large procession hall to get some sort of blessing in front of another much larger elephant statue. It then proceeds through the corridor to night near sunken water feature for further devotional music and lots of incense smoke before being taken into another part of the temple where foreigners can't go. It was all a bit elaborate but to be honest not in the least inspiring to me.


* Drawings of Ruby(6 yrs old) after visiting thee temple.







It's interesting to see yet another culture though where you got some weird sort of devotional actions. Some people were kind of hopping, others circling and touching a series of little cared characters. You see similar kind of things in all the big organised religions.
The Jews nodding at the wall with those strange little boxes tied to their foreheads, the evangelical Christians with their outheld hands, speaking in tongues the Muslims prostrating themselves five times a day. I can't relate to it really. I'm sure many participating in this don't either to some extent. I think they begin by being pressured into it by those obnoxiously pious types that always do this stuff to the letter and gave the seemingly less devout the 'bad eye' or remonstrate them directly. I find that kind of behaviour really irritating as it is always carried out in a situation where the pious are very at home and at least feel they have a sense of power over others in that environment. I'm sure if they faced the same from someone in a place outside their comfort zone they would experience the same discomfort. Unfortunately the more pious they are the more likely they would turn to violence in that situation too, probably delayed until they had a supporting throng due to their own cowardice. These people are the cancers of the spirit.





We headed back to the retiring room after getting our shoes. The autorickaw took a different route back through myriad little backstreets that were absolutely full of vehicles, onto the main road which was also barely moving. Looked like it was mainly caused by one arrogant rich bastard who had stopped on an angle which his big 4WD blocked a good part of the road. Mind you it seems everyone has so consideration like that as they'll all happily block the way and sit there watching everyone else struggle to get past. Strangely not many people seem to get annoyed by this. It's the same with intersections where everyone just goes for whatever gap is available on any side of the road until it grinds to a halt and then each gradually entricates themselves to move on again. The other things that amuse me are that no-one looks before pulling out into traffic unless something like a bus or truck is blaring its horn enough to be heard above the constant blaring of everyone else's horn. 
All this happens without many obvious collisions, although I'm sure some happen. Crossing main rods is interesting too, you just walk into the first gap and keep a steady pace so everyone can judge how to dodge around you. If you try and run or stop too much it upsets the whole thing.

Once back at the hotel, I had to go out for something Eunmi needed but couldn't find what she wanted in any shop. So I was away for one hour or so and returned to a not so happy Eunmi, who had in the meantime stormed downstairs and found it in a shop at the station. Doh!
I was feeling a bit hacked off as well because I had to haul our tow backpacks, kids bags upstairs. As usual we both got over it after a bit.
We all had a bit of a rest after getting a bit of washing done, and went out to the temple again in another attempt to see the 'live' elephant procession.
We decided to walk this time as it's not far. Had to stop for a chai on the way and managed to get Ellie interested in eating some local sweet.

We went around the temple at Madurai and spend a good 2-3 hours there. Interesting watching all the devotional goings on, with people attending to very small deities carved into pillars, as well as the larger ones housed in chambers or seated on thrones. 
I must admit I can't find much inspiration in it myself, though obviously many do.
We sat around a big sunken pond in a kind of courtyard for a whole as the girls ran around and covered themselves in some tale or dolomite powder that people used for some devotional purpose. No one seemed to mind.



We did finally get to see the procession of the 'elephant' god from one part of the temple to another, but it was housed inside a little temple born on the shoulders of some of the monk, so you couldn't see it anyway.
It ended with a fairly long devotional process involving lots of incenses, flowers and chanting, and one of the monks gave Ellie a big lotus flower.