The Road to Bangalore

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My car turned up at the hotel at 9.30 sharp and we set off to Bangalore, by way of Kanchipuram (or Kanchi, as the locals rather predictably call it). Thinking about it, maybe it's not really an abbreviation. Perhaps it's just like calling London Town, London. "Puram" just means a small town, after all.

As we drove through and out of Mamallapuram I saw more temples on both sides of the road. I justconcentrated on the main sights but to really see most of what the town has to offer, you'd have to stay for more than a week.

There was a slow moving ox cart going the same way as us, so loaded up with straw that the driver was almost covered and there was straw even on the head of the ox.

In the country areas I was interested to se road signs like the ones I think I remember in England back in the 1960s. The signs had a yellow background and on to this were drawn white oblongs outlined in black. The signage itself was written in black on the white space.

We passed through the small town of Chengalpattu where I saw, from the car, an hexagonal clock tower and a mosque with an elegant minaret. There is a large lake outside the town that apparently supplies much of the area with fresh water.

Some time before reaching Kanchi we saw the famous Eagle Temple of Thirukazhukundram, sitting on top of a hill. The legend is that two eagles fly every day from Varanasi on the Ganges to this temple (about two thousand miles as the eagle flies), arriving at noon. They have lunch here and then fly south to Rameswaram, the place in India nearest to Sri Lanka. They then fly north up the coast to Chidambaram, go to sleep, and in the morning they fly north to Varanasi for a bath in the Ganges and then off back to Thirukazhukundram again. It is said they have been doing this for hundreds of years.

But the eagles fly here no longer.

Some say this a bad omen. Others say that they were never eagles at all, but vultures, and that they have been killed in the general holocaust of vultures that threatens the Parsis' funeral arrangements - see my blog from Mumbai.

We only looked at the temple from the road as we didn't have time to visit. I saw neither eagle nor vulture.

Kanchi is famous for its temples and also for its silk making industry and the saris sold there. We only had time for a whirlwind visit to three temples and a silk factory.

The first temple I visited was the Varadharajaswamy temple. I was escorted around by a Brahmin priest. As is the case with most South Indian Hindu temples I could not go in to the actual sanctum. Signs explained that non-Hindus could not enter and also forbade entry to those wearing lungis. This quite suprised me because most South Indian men do seem to wear this sort of traditional skirt like garment.

This ancient temple is almost 1,000 years old and was largely rebuilt by the Pallavas at about the time the Shore Temple in Mamalla was constructed. It is dedicated to Vishnu and his wooden idol. said to be 3,000 years old is sunk at the bottom of the temple's great tank. I asked the Brahmin (my accountant's instincts emerging) how they could know if the idol was still in good condition. He told me that it was ceremoniously raised from the water once every forty years - to give everyone at least one time in their lifetime when they can worship it. The last time this was done was in 1979, so another outing is due in about ten years time. In the meantime there is a stone idol of Vishnu in the temple.

There is a mandapam with 96 pillars where weddings are performed - including the mystical marriage of Lord Vishnu to Goddess Lakshmi which is due to take place next Friday. It is called the 100 pillar mandapam because they say that Ram and his three brothers are the other four pillars.

The pillars are wonderfully decorated with horses and other animals.

As we were walking round the tank I saw a large white animal that at first I took for a cow. It was a horse. I asked the brahmin about it and he said it was a temple horse used in processions. I asked him if there was a temple elephant. He said "Elephant two years ago drop dead. We are waiting for government to send new elephant". I hadn't realised that temple elephants were state provided but I suppose its a function of a controlled trade if they are a protected species.

Next we visited a silk factory where a saw silk woven on a loom and the owners unsuccesfully tried to sell me saris amd shawls.

I was delighted to see, after seeing the same sort of autos in town after town, that the autos here had mutated again and evolved into a giant species of Shared Autos which operate alongside the normal sort. They are similar to the public autos in Udaipur but can carry a lot more people.

Next I visited the Kamakshi Amman temple and they had two temple elephants! They could have lent one to the Varadharajaswamy lot! I couldn't resist being blessed again but only paid one elephant.

This temple is dedicated to Kamakshi, who is one of the ten aspects of the Divine Mother. She suffuses all of creation with desire. One of the other forms is Tara, who is the unconquerabv
le hunger that propels all life.

After lunch I went to the Kailasnatha Temple. This temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva and was bulit by the Palavas about 100 years after the Shore Temple. The temple itself was closed but I was able to wander about the grounds. The temple is surrounded by dozens of sphynx-like Nandis. There is a new gopuram which has a lovely carving of the Shiva family. I could not tell how many, if any, temple elephants they had because it was closed.

Back on the road to Bangalore we went through a group of unusual looking hills. Some of them seemed covered in a carapace of hard rock which had been poured like icing over their summits. Congealed bits of rock in the form of oddly shaped boulders lay all over them. Along the road there were palm trees and what looked to me like (short) cedar trees. Do cedars grow in India?

We passed from Tanil Nadu into Karnatka and soon afterwards the national highway gave out and we were on poor roads again. The traffic got worse as we approached Bangalore. On the outskirts I saw modern hi-tech buildings, including a glass pyramid like that at the Louvre, and also a giant statue of a green Hanuman.

Once we arrived in Bangalore - everyone seems to call it that, but officially it is Bengaluru - ny driver did not know the way. Neither did he know much of the local language. It was interesting to hear him ask questions of the local people in "English". I couldn't understand a word of it but they did. Indian English is really quite different from the home grown variety. It's manily the pronunciation that gives me problems, the vowel sounds and the stresses are similar to Indian languages. There are vocabulary differences but these are generally minor and I read the papers here easily and with great pleasure. I can understand most of DNTV 24 on television too.

But we finally made it - and here I am in Bangalore, the IT and call centre centre of India.

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