The great indian pilgrimage story:
Continuing our great south indian tour, last weekend we decided to visit Rameshwaram. This place had looked very inviting in Mani Rathnam'sKannathil Mutthamittal and so we accepted the invitation and boarded thebus to Madurai. Without spending time on Meenakshi Temple, we took a DVDcoach bus to Rameshwaram. This was to be one of the most entertaining journeys i took in tamil Nadu. As the three of us struggled to fit ourbums in the cramped seat, tam superstar Vijaykanth roared from one of the(loud)speakers in the bus. And the next two hours were gone in a jiffy aswe were mesmerised by the tricks and antics of this man who seems(justifibly) to have the tam crowd under his command. Ah..how I loved the movie (later googling revealed the movie's name was Vallarasu). It has true potential of a remake in hindi with the great Chaako da.
Snorkeling: Rameshwaram figures on every devout Hindu's to-do list. But not for snorkeling, I am sure. As soon as we landed in the hotel, a guide was arranged at our request who would take us to snorkeling. Within half an hour, we shed all (well..almost all) our clothes and jumped onto the boat. The sea is quite shallow there..Till about 2 km inside the sea it is at-max waist deep water. And Sri Lanka is only about 40 km away. So armed with a mask, i jumped into the water and a star fish greeted me. I even held one star fish while small multi-colored fish swam around me. I could see three colors of star fish (black, yellow and white) and many corals (the most notable being blue coral). After fooling around and making life hell for these innocent creatures for about an hour and a half, we made our way to a sandy patch..this is an awesome place. In the middle of thesea, suddenly you have a stretch of clean, smooth sand and water is only about a foot deep and here we took a good sun bath.
The Temple: The most unusual temple I have ever been to in my life. Built in 12th century, this place has 22 wells and in order to wash away all your sins, you have to take bath with the water drawn out of all these wells. And after you are all drenched and wet to the bone, you are told that you can't go to the main temple in wet clothes. But then, where there is a will, there is a way. :o) But truely a unique experience.
The Ghost Town: Next morning, we started for the town of Dhanuskodi. This place is an island and is extended in the sea for about 20 km. It is this place where sattelites have shown a sort of a coral formation all the wayto Sri Lanka (18 km)...this is where Lord Rama crossed the sea. On oneside it has Indian Ocean and on the other side Bay of Bengal..this island is not more than a km wide. In 1964, a great cyclone hit the town at 12 in the night and 25000 sleeping people never saw daylight. Till date, it is uninhabitated. There are unending stretches of sand on both side of the road as if both the ocean and the bay have clearly demarcated their territories. It is a sight to behold. As we walked 6km on the Indian ocean beach, the town, the ruins of a church and a temple, the old railwaystation, the arches of the houses..they all tell you a story of a devastating night when nature showed no mercy. While we walked towards the meeting point, the indian ocean was all energetic and violent but the bayof bengal was quite as if mourning what happened with Ganguly the other day. Bay of Bengal was like a calm swimming pool of lukewarm water with unending boundaries. Well..after a lovely time in both the sides we started our journey back with the great indian pilgrimage class...few words for this species: they come all the way from Rameshwaram, loaded like chicken on a truck and all they did at the beach was to wet their feet and go back dutifully to the truck for the journey back.....well...we also started our journey back....on the rooftop of a mini truck. The truck had about 15 people on the top, about 12-15 standing on the footboard andabout 20-22 odd people in the back. Rarely does one give a thought to thepoor engineers who design such a thing. It was one such moment when all i could think was "Hope you had your design fandaes clear while designingthis crawling beast, mister". And now that i am safe and sound, I guess he had his fandaes clear. :o)
Back in chennai for another week. This project is turning out to be apicnic with work in between. But who is complaining!