Days 76 to 78 – Madurai
Day 76 – Friday, 10th Jan 2014 to Day 78 – Sunday, 12th Jan 2014
It’s Summer of 1997 and my parents and I are visiting our close relatives in the quintessential town of Madurai. Anna Nagar where our relatives live is a premier locality with spread out bungalows. I was in awe of such exquisite living because as Mumbaikars, we are used to the hustle and bustle.
It’s Friday, Jan 10th – Khyati and I are in Madurai at our relative’s place. I am trying to recollect stories from back then but my memory fades me. Anna Nagar is now a well developed locality with innumerable hospitals. There are 10 big hospitals in the vicinity of our relatives place and we found that Madurai has one of the best eye care hospitals. Vrajlal Masa – our host enthusiastically shared many more nuggets about this town. Obviously – urban development has got the better of most town and Madurai is no different. The roads are clean, well laid out with bridges, new high end construction and a major railway junction with connections to almost all parts of India. It was hard to believe Madurai like this 15 years ago.
We find out that this week is Pongal and most schools, businesses will remain closed to celebrate the festival. For the locals, it’s their New Year and there was a festive mood around.
Madurai is not a tourist town. There are only two major sight seeing spots – Meenakshi Temple (400 year old temple) and Gandhi memorial.
On the first day, we visit Meenakshi Temple. Meenakshi temple is a huge temple with 4 major gate entrances and then within the complex, they have a Meenakshi (another name for Parvathi – wife of Shiva) and Shiva temple. Due to the Pongal season, there were a lot of Aiyappa devotees and lines were 3-4 hours long. We skip visiting the core temple but walk around the pond and the outer area of the temple. History has it that after Meenakshi temple was built, an entire city was built around it and you can see that the temple is right in the heart of the city.
East entrance of Meenakshi Temple
Next day, we visit Gandhi Memorial in the morning.
Gandhi Memorial
This is a free museum It depicts the entire history of Indian freedom struggle in the form of a pictorial journey. We enjoy visiting the museum. Gandhi has left such a profound impact on the people of Madurai. Story has it that in 1914, when Gandhi visited Madurai, he saw the poor state of his fellow people and gave up wearing regular clothes and changed to only a loin wear. Pre Independence, here is a picture of the various flag designs of India.
Indian flag history
Outside the Gandhi museum, there was loud music being played and a local speaking in Tamil. We head in that direction to find out more and see that the locals are celebrating Pongal. We stand by the side to enjoy the various activities and competitions. Here’s a picture of the Matka race – girls had to balance the pot upside down on their head and walk a distance of 100 meters. It was fun!
kids involved in pot race
In the evening our hosts take us to a lake. To our amuse, it was an empty lake. As you can see, there is a temple in the center of the lake and for people to go worship, they had to sail in a small boat and reach the temple. Nowadays, due to lack of water, people just climb down the steps and walk to the temple. We had a good laugh!
previously a lake and a temple in the center
It’s Sunday and Vrajlal masa takes us to Jain School. It’s a school built by the Jain and Gujarati community in Madurai. The school is one of the best in Madurai and offers education to over 400 students. We also saw Jain hospital where they offer cataract operations to poor people for a meagre cost. What a noble cause! We drive around the city and visit the various pockets of Madurai. It’s afternoon and we head back home for lunch. Post lunch, I catch up on my writing while Khyati finishes packing for our onward journey.
It’s been a good 3 days with family and we couldn’t thank our hosts enough for their hospitality and warmth.
Vrajlal Masa and Vora family
It’s 4 pm and Vipul kaka drops us to Madurai station. Our journey now takes us to Kanyakumari, the Southern tip of India and the confluence of three major water bodies – Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and Indian ocean.
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Best wishes,
Paras