lifeofpri # 4 - Temple trail in Tamil Nadu

Growing up as a Bangalore kid in the 90s, Tamil was one of the languages that prominently featured in my childhood alongside Kannada. Naturally, I had many Tamil-speaking friends. After all, we’re bound together by the river, Kaveri.

I’ve always been able to understand some Tamil, but never enough to converse fluently. So, I was really looking forward to my trip to Tamil Nadu with the family last month to put my Tamil speaking skills to test.

My 6yo is a big fan of Ponniyan Selvan, having read the comic books enough number of times for it to now be tatters. So, we thought why not visit the Chola heartland. Also, it made more sense travelling east from Bangalore, given monsoon and all.

As a family, we love road trips, it gives us a lot of flexibility to go whenever and wherever without much planning. We booked our stays for the nights (at Madurai, Chettinad and Kumbakonam), and then decided to figure the rest of the trip on the go.

Madurai - Bun Parotta, Idiyappams and Skipping Darshans

The last time I was in Madurai was with my parents almost 3 decades ago. It was part of a religious package tour across South India, much like the one Srinath Perur talks about in his book, If it’s Monday, it must be Madurai.

But I knew there was more to Madurai than the Meenakshi temple, at least based on what I saw in the movie, Jigarthanda.

My husband and I aren’t religious, so it was a very different experience from the one I’d had before. We stayed at Taj Gateway, a beautiful property on a hill with a view of the entire city of Madurai.

Before we visited the temple, people suggested we uber it from our hotel since parking near the temple can be a pain, etc. but we had no such trouble. The temple parking is huge, like mall parking lot, and it’s quite accessible from the temple.

We walked to the temple, managed to circle around the temple through its multiple layers, but the queue into the inner sanctorums was so long, we didn’t bother trying to enter. The temple has a beautiful Kalyani with a fountain, so we just sat on the warm steps for a while and watched the colours of the fountain change.

The temple is asymmetric, and I wonder if it’s designed that way on purpose so you are able to see all the gopurams without any of them blocking the view of the other.

Being a temple town, the place is super crowded with religious people, just about everywhere. At some point, we were even stopped in traffic to let a huge procession of people who were performing some sort of sacrificial ritual (you know the type where they have a spear pierced through their mouths) cross the road.

These pilgrims are part of the city’s character, and they blend quite seamlessly into its infrastructure (or the lack of it). I think, as a consequence of being a “holy” land in India, the hygiene level of the city is questionable.

Okay, I know that people are going to quote examples of religious places that are uber clean like the Mecca or Golden Temple, but I haven’t been there, so for now, you’ll have to make do with this extrapolation of my limited experience. Sorry.

In general, the roads were not great, footpaths were either non-existent or dug up in most places and wide open sewers ran right through the middle of the city. Overall, not a very walkable city, except around the Vaigai river which was mostly dried up.

But you see, we were pilgrims too, but just on a different kind of pilgrimage - a culinary pilgrimage, if you may call it that. We started the evening with Burmese Idiyappam (thin steamed rice noodles) with sugar and coconut and ended the night with dinner at a street side kadai (shop) where we got to taste the very famous Bun Parotta and Mutton Chukka.

It took me a while to realise that chukka was the sukka (in Kannada). Interestingly, this difference in pronunciation due to some sounds being missing in Tamil (versus Kannada or English) featured throughout the journey from Bangalore to Salem with names of villages, very similar to the ones in Karnataka, spelt differently.

Anyway, the following morning, we went to Anand Adyar Bhavan near the Thirumala Nayakar palace for breakfast. So much for wanting to practice my Tamil, the waiter annai over there started talking to us in Hindi, despite me attempting to speak to him in Tamil. I suppose I had grossly overestimated the Tamil pride from all the speeches by Tamil politicians.

The experience was quite different from eating in a Bangalore dose restaurant, especially with respect to the dosai and condiments ratio. It’s rather unfair given that the size of a Tamil dosai is much bigger, and they expect you to make do with one spoon of 3 different chutneys each (coconut, pudina and tomato).

In some Bangalore restaurants (Dwarka, Brahmins, etc.), chutney service is a legit full-time job, but here, the waiter declared that they’d run out of the coconut chutney by the time we asked for a third serving. I suppose, that was our cue to leave Madurai.

Chettinad - Luxury mansions and messes

Before we went on our road trip, we’d researched eating places on YouTube. Our metric for authenticity was based on whether the place was recommended by a Tamil influencer or not. When we drove down to Karaikudi from Madurai, we had two options - Sri Priya mess and Alagu mess.

On our way to Madurai, we’d stopped for lunch at Salem at Selvi mess (highly recommend it). So we had some basic understanding of non-veg meals in a mess. All you get with the meals is unlimited rice, 3 kinds of kolambu (gravies) and if you ask nicely (more about this later), then may be rasam and buttermilk.

So we went to Sri Priya mess, which was a tiny kuccha building with an even tinier AC room that could barely accommodate 4 tables sticking to each other. I felt a bit claustrophobic in there. But as if that wasn't enough, I was super intimidated by the serving aunty there.

We ordered meals and one side dish for each of us. But that aunty was not satisfied. She kept asking what else we wanted every couple of minutes. I can’t tell if this was upselling or hospitality, but every time I said no, I felt like I was disappointing her.

Finally, I caved and we ended up ordering a crab side dish. Feeling relieved, I bravely asked for rasam. But she adamantly said she’d bring it in the end.

I was reminded of how waiters in Europe feel so offended when you order food before your drinks. I used my child as an excuse to mess with the ordering of her service, and she reluctantly obliged.

I realised that these places don’t serve you butter milk unless you explicitly ask them to. I can’t tell if it’s a cultural thing or just upselling. But they’ll happily sell you a goli soda or a beeda towards the end of your meal.

In a weird sort of way, the service here in a non-veg restaurant was overcompensating for the lack of service in the earlier veg restaurant. It made me wonder if veg food must be priced differently in order to warrant better service quality.

Anyway, from here, we headed to the Attangudi Palace, which is a basically a mansion built in Chettinad style. It was beautiful. Although, it’s quite bizarre to think that these homes are abandoned.

So, Chettinad is basically a collection of 96 villages, previously inhabited by a community called Chetiyars. But I believe today, only 75-76 of them remain, which most of the Chettiyars themselves have migrated to various parts of the world (Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Myanmar, etc.) in th 19th and early 20th century (around Second World War).

So, today, these mansions which belonged to Nagarathars, bankers and merchants of years, remain as relics of their earlier impoverishment. Some of these have been restored as either museums or hotels. We stayed in one such beautiful mansion called Visalam by CGH Earth.

As we were driving to our hotel, it was impossible to tell from its facade to the road that the gates were hiding something so mesmerising. I am a big sucker for old flooring, wooden pillars, teak furniture, old photographs and central courtyards. I mean, what is not to like about a piece of history tucked away in modernity.

The rooms were humongous and beautifully designed. We also really enjoyed our breakfast at the hotel which was basically a South Indian breakfast thali including ragi puttu, panniyarum, idli, vada, dosai and poori with potato kolambu.

I only wish we’d stayed there for a few days so I could leisurely explore the town, and experience it at my pace rather than being rushed through it in less than a day.

Tanjore, Kumbakonam and Jayankondam

We headed out from Chettinad early towards Tanjore. Enroute, we saw a fort with a temple behind, and it wasn’t very far from the highway, so we decided to take a small detour. It was a place called Thirumayam.

We circled the fort and went to the Sathyamurthi Perumal temple (maintained by ASI), built by the Pandyas. This is a rock-cut temple, which shares its back walls with the fort, has one of the largest Anantasayi (Lord Vishnu reclining on Seshanaga). It was stunning. The overall architecture, including the sculpture on the pillars were quite different from other temples - with all male figures.

In general, we love ASI temples, thanks to their maimed idols, which make them unfit for ritualistic ceremonies (and thank god for such ridiculous rules in the Hindu culture) and hence, devoid of crowds. This lets you appreciate the architecture peacefully without being exhausted by the chaos.

Given that a big agenda of our road trip was to see the Brihadeshwara temple in Tanjore, carried on after our little happy detour. This temple built by Rajaraja Chola I (Arulmozhi from Ponniyan Selvan), looks stunning and comes into view as soon as you enter the main road on which the temple complex is located.

I’d seen Brihadeshwara three decades on the same South India tour with my parents. I don’t know if it’s because I was smaller (literally) then, this time, I felt like the temple looked a bit stunted.

Again, an insanely crowded temple. Given that it was quite hot by the time we made it there, we were busy trying to run across the quadrangle of the temple to get to cooler parts of the temple complex, from where we could stand and admire the temple Gopuram which has a single piece 80-tonne granite rock right at the top.

We didn’t bother entering the inner sanctorum, because there was a massive line, as usual. We admired the architecture, looked at all the beautiful paintings on the ceiling and walls (remember, Thanjavur is famous for art) and quickly exited the scene.

Given that it’s a religious town, vegetarian hotels are in plenty and so we had lunch at Sree Ariya Bhavan, which is quite close to the temple. We belted regular South Indian meals. The food was nice, but the service was unlike any other vegetarian restaurant - the waiter scolded me for eating before feeding my 6 year old.

Well, how does one rate the service now?

Next, we wanted to visit the Thanjavur Palace, but didn’t have much success finding it. Instead, we started driving towards Kombakonam. Enroute, we visited the Airavateswara Temple, built by Rajaraja Chola II (Arulmozhi’s grandson), in Dharasuram. This is part of the Great Living Chola Temples trio.

As you can imagine, this temple is highly influenced by the Brihadisvara. It has a larger temple complex but a smaller Nandi (Shiva’s vahana - a feature in every Shiva temple), compared to the one at the Big Temple. This temple seemed more like a “picnic” spot with lots of local tourists who had come there to enjoy the architecture rather than the religious ceremonies.

As we drove towards our hotel for the night, yet another property by CGH Earth, I noticed how Kumbakonam is so full of temples, although we didn’t stop at any of them. As we drove through the narrow highway right through the towns around the Kaveri Delta, I kept noticing boards claiming to serve the best coffee.

Turns out, coffee in Kombakonam is indeed great. The village style coffee shop in our resort served us the best coffee on this trip - Kumbakonam Degree Coffee. I love my coffee with chicory (you single origin pure coffee snobs can judge me all you want), because nothing uplifts me like a well-made filter kaapi first thing in the morning.

Resorts make for very painful stays, especially when all you’re trying to do is spend the night someone comfortable. They have a lot of unnecessary extra fittings like cultural programs, nature walks or activities for children that they try to impress upon you. So going forward, I’ll definitely avoid properties that boast a massive size and hence, programs to justify the capex.

Next morning, we drove to Gangaikonda Cholapuram in Jayakondam, to see the temple built by Rajendra I (son of Rajaraja I). Once again, inspired by Brihadisvara, in terms of architecture, but a low budget production (seen in the cement Nandi?), even compared to his son’s temple in Darasuram. Since it was a much smaller temple, we were done quite quickly and ready to head home.

The one thing I noticed through our time in Tamil Nadu is this - the chief minister, Stalin’s pictures are all over the place, every city, every village and every highway. Political Leaders in Tamil Nadu enjoy some demi-god like status, which is very unlike what I’ve seen in Karnataka.

The other stand out feature was men in bright white shirts and dhotis everywhere. White’s great for the hot weather, but I wondered how they manage to keep them so clean in such heat and dust. I had the exact same thought when I saw the Bedouin tribe in the Wadi Rum dessert in Jordan.

Overall, this was an intense four-day quick trip in and out of Bangalore, with my craving for conversations in Tamil barely satisfied. I know I have a lot more Tamil left in me, and many more temples to re-visit as an adult.