TELC Jubilee church, Kodaikanal

Nowadays, Kodaikanal is a busy tourist town, filled with shops selling homemade chocolates(you will never know who's home though) and oil. The climate attracts people, as well as the views. However, a hundred years ago, Kodiakanal was, apart from being a British retreat, a missionary's outpost.

In the suburbs of Kodaikanal are two areas, near each other, known as German settlement, and Swedish settlement. Neither has either Germans or Swedes, but the name remains. The areas have been sold, one to a school, and the other developed. Of the settlements, a simple Google search throws up nothing.  Of the church, not much.

The Germans in the German Settlement built a church commemorating 200 years of the oldest church in Tranquebar.(in 1707.) This church, built in 1906, was known as the Jubilee church.

The plaque on the wall

Climbing up the long slope from the metal gate, you enter the small door at the back of the church. The church inside is smaller than you would expect.On either end of the structure, are two small, stained glass windows, right on top. There are a few rows of benches, thick walls, with nothing on them, and the pulpit. The wood used for the cross is supposed to have come from Jerusalem.

The architecture inside is unchanged from when they built it. Service is still conducted on Sundays we were told. Service used to be held in 4 languages, until about 25 years ago: English, German, Swedish and Tamil. However, nowadays it is only in Tamil. 

Inside of the church

Outside, the heavy bell dates back to 1923, and is inscribed with a verse from the Bible. The bell is rung three times on Sunday mornings to alert people that mass is going to begin. It bears a legend 'Kodaikanal, 1923'. The structure it sits on was rebuilt in 1981 to celebrate 50 years of the church. The plaque sits inside the structure. 

Bell tower

At the back, are two unmarked graves. We were told that there were the ones who initiated the building of the Church, and that in their (German) custom, graves do not usually have names.

From 10:30 to 6 on Fridays, the church is open to visitors, so do have a look if you are in Kodi, at this unique little church. For location, click here

The train stops at Walajah road

A holiday in Bangalore had just got over in May. And now Amma and i were on our way back. The train ride was smooth, as we sat and watched the Karnataka countryside roll by, all hills and rolling grasslands. Once the plains came into view however, trouble started.
Our compartment comprised a varied section of travellers, as all compartments do. However, this fact will play a key role later on. For now, the train rattles on.
Well, the train entered Andhra. At Kuppam, it stopped for an unnaturally long time. And we were an hour behind schedule. But luckily we entered Tamil Nadu. Vellore was one and a half hours behind schedule. Here a lot of people got out. And then we reached Wallajah road junction. A sleepy town near Arcot, Wallajah road station is one or two stops before Arrakonam station.
We sat in the train for nearly two hours at that station. Finally, those who could, got out and booked taxis for themselves, and headed home. Chennai. Now the train was nearly 3 hours behind schedule.It was past midday. And there was no clue on what was going on. That was when i called a friend who used to work in the railways. She explained that there was some track laying work going on at Arrakonam station, and that usually took 3-4 days. Were we to be stuck here for that long??
Well, Amma decided to make her own enquiries, and after 15 minutes she came back highly irritated. It seems the engine driver (the engine was hardly 2 compartments away) told her he was only waiting for signal and the TTE told her that he had no idea, and that if she was in a hurry, should get down and book a cab. Irritated, she asked him if he would book it for her, as she had already booked a railway ticket. What was the use?
The other problem with booking a cab was, would there even be cabs available in Wallajah road?
For the last few hours as we sat at Wallajah road, we had been sweating without the AC as well.

That was when we got lucky. The diversity of our group saved us. One man, travelling with his son and some aunts for a wedding in Chennai, knew a van agency in Wallajah road. He managed to get hold of a 15 seater van.
This the man was planning while amma was outside listening to announcements and I charged my phone inside.
Suddenly Amma ran in and said the train would not go even upto Arrakkonam. They were stopping at the previous station! And thats when we were invited onto the van.
15 of us got out of the compartment, and stood on the platform. The man got on his phone and wandered off, leaving his son to guide us to him. Our next hurdle now awaited us. Getting to the van.
First we walked half the length of the platform. Then we crossed the foot over-bridge. That was where we all carried each others luggage, and an old lady, bent double, was helped to hobble up across and down slowly. That was when we heard a trains whistle, and the double decker, that was meant to get there at 8, rolled in at 2. Once back on land outside the station, we crossed a little bridge and got to the bus stop where the van awaited us. Putting our luggage in, and squashing in after it, we all managed somehow. The van then navigated through the town, and entered the highway. I turned off my dying phone, but not before getting some photos. The van would only take us upto Poonamallee but we were fine with that, as that was at least inside Chennai.
The van shot across the state, passing Kanchipuram, and following the course of the Palar, as people talked and got to know each other, something that would not have happened without the accident. Someone talked about how this rail work was apparently mentioned on South Indian Railways FB page, but we all wondered who would bother looking at it. Someone else said they had tweeted this, tagging the Central Minister for Railways, hoping we would all get some compensation for what we had been through.
As we passed the place in Sriperumbedur where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, someone mentioned how they had been working at a nearby factory at that time, but because of calling in sick that day, they had avoided going to the rally and being splattered with blood like his colleagues.
And then at long last, Poonamallee. We said our goodbyes and thanked that man who had booked the van. I turned on my phone and died conveniently died, as we had a quick coffee before heading back home.
The last stage of our journey also bears mentioning. Our Ola driver was very happy to get a South Chennai drop as he lived in Thoraippakkam, and was hoping to get a drop in that area.
As we drove past St Thomas Mount and turned towards Pallikaranai, I saw the last stretch of the MRTS rail, waiting to be connected. Sad really that this vital connection was being held up because of a few metres of land. It was also ironic, as they had ploughed through the marsh for this destroying a natural ecosystem, but a few people insisted on staying put (though they probably didn't have anywhere else to go).  The marsh looks reduced everytime I see it, and I try to avoid that route if possible to avoid seeing that depleted marshland.
Finally we reached the ECR, and our driver got a call for a drop to Kottivakkam. He was now doubly happy. Only a couple of kilometres left for him after that on his own  money.
We however, were not. Dirty, tired and irritated, we showered the moment we came home and rested well, having had our arrival delayed, (now at 5:30) by 5 and a half hours!

People from everywhere sit around as no train is going anywhere

Travelling to Thillai - 8: Chidambaram

After driving on the highway for a short distance(well, short in highway terms), we reached the most holy city for Shaivites, Chidambaram. This is where the lord dances, where Shiva is Nataraja, the cosmic dancer, and dances in the wheel of fire, crushing a demon underfoot, twirling a snake through his fingers, with a smile on his face.
The temple has been in existence since the time of the Pallavas, but in the time of Gandaraditya, the son of Parantaka I, he gold plated the roof of the temple, and wrote a series of songs on the temple.
Rajaraja and the later Cholas expanded the temple further, and during muslim invasions, especially of Malik Kafur's, the idol was taken away, and hidden, until the threat had passed. The Cholas had a palace here, where they stayed when touring the country. Kulothunga II  made frequent visits here.
The Chidambaram temple was also supposed to have held Olai(Palm leaf manuscripts) written by Appar, Sundarar and Thirugnanasambandar, the three saint-singer-songwriters of Shaivism, who lived in the 6th-8th centuries. These manuscripts were feircely guarded, but Rajaraja made a royal decree that stated that the temple must make these documents public. But by that time, a lot of them had disintegrated.
The Vijaynagar kings patronised Chidambaram as well, and made contributions, as did the Nayaks, in the large mandapams and courtyards around the original temple structure, which you have to come through to enter the temple. Even to this day, the roofing of the central shrine is gold plated.
The deity is only about half a foot high, but magnificently carved out of wood. There is also a crystal lingam here.
The Gopurams are another interesting feature. One of them is pre-Vijaynagar, but the rest are post. One gopuram has been closed off. Two gopurams have figures in dance poses, with grantha captions above them! One gopuram was renovated by Kanchipuram Pachiappa Mudaliar, and bears an inscription, and a statue of him, in his honour. There is also a Chola or Kadavarayar (Kopperunjingan I or II)ruler carved into a gopuram,
The Chidambaram temple does not permit photography inside, not even in the outer prakarams, so unfortunately, photos are very limited.

A pillar in the Gopuram

Gopuram

A figure, with the grantha above

The ruler

Pachaiappa Mudaliar from the 18th cent

The inscription which mentions the year, and the fact that KP Mudaliar was the man who renovated the Gopuram. 

Location: Chidambaram nataraja temple

Stop 2: Nageswaraswamy temple

Kumbakonam Trip: Stop 2: Nageswaraswamy temple and sun worship: We drove into the heart of Kumbakonam town, and past the other big temples, to another one which, according to the brochure, had been vandalised and was on the list so that we could see it before everything was gone.
Entering the temple by the main gopuram, you come across a large open space. To one side is a passage that runs along the wall on one side, and the temple on the other. Nithya Balaji and I found a chariot there; a horse and a wheel. Her theory was that the alternating spokes were for the different hours of the day, and another set of lines for day and night.
Appa later pointed out the various distanced lines on the wheel, marking hours, minutes, seconds, days , months and years.
It was a very pleasant day, so the lack of sunlight didn't let us see whether it was true or not.
But a Pradeep Chakravarthy moving at full speed form the gopuram into the temple caught our attention- that as well as his calling to us, and we entered the temple's mandapams.
We had soon gone into an open-to-sky section though, with a lot of inscriptions and figurines.
According to Pradeep Chakravarthy: This was an Aditya I (Chola) temple, constructed when the Cholas had left Parzeyarey as dominion chiefs, and wanted to be the supreme rulers of the Tamirz lands. They had had enough of being petty chieftains, so the warlord Vijayalaya Chola seized Thanjavur in the mid 800's. That was the beginning for them, and the end for the Pallavas. Soon they had conquered most of the delta region and shifted the capital to Thanjavur. Now they wanted to be seen as great rulers, so they started building larger temples, and associating themselves with long forgotten Sangam ancestors who were acclaimed as having done some great deed or the other.
Their temples started to get more complex only with Aditya I and Parantaka I.
This is one of those temples built by Aditya, and has verya simple style. It has a base piece with some simple carvings, a plinth, some idols in niches, some pillars around them, a piece above their heads, again simply carved, and another piece on top before the gopuram. The temple in its originality had only 1 shrine, and the niche images(which unfortunately have been damaged due to sandblasting) around it with inscriptions. Each succeeding dynasty added to the temple, right upto the Nayaks and Marathas. I think I even saw a Tamil Nadu Arasu(Government of Tamilnadu) elephant.
Some of the idols in these niches are believed to be of the royal family. They are being vandalised and defaced now, though.
We looked at the inscriptions, trying to decipher them for a few minutes.
Then we went inside to listen to some songs sung on the temple. As we were moving round the temple though, we spotted an Ardanadeeswarar. Pradeep jumped at it and said " You can see an example of how men and women are of different proportions here". The Arthanadeeswar has been made of stone, with one hip higher than the other, and that leg bent, keeping both sides the same height, but maintaining the male:female ratio.

After listening to the songs, we were directed to a small temple on the outside of the mandapam we were sitting in. This is a sun worship temple. One of the original gods in Vedic times, and still slightly worshipped at the time of the Cholas, this was built for the sun worshppers. Sun worship was not practiced in the Vedic region alone, but also in Zorastrianism.
The Sun slowly evolved and merged with Vishnu. Who is worshipped in Konarak. This temple, with its time chariot and sun temple, may have been the basis for the Konarak temple in Orissa.

We then left exited the temple, and went back to the common area outside. Here, I asked Pradeep Chakravarthy about a pair of lions that i had seen. He then told me the difference between Chola lions and Pallava lions. These were Chola lions, identifiable by the shape of the pillar, the space between the head and the pillar and the decorations on the pillar.
We then took pictures with the horses and wheels, and everyone stood around posing with them. As I walked to the chariot on the other side of where I had seen it first, I noticed a set of steps going up to behind them. I made a mental note of it, and after taking my pictures, walked up those stairs and stood behind the horse, and took some pictures from there. Someone asked Priya Thyagarajan to sit on the horse for a picture, and she started climbing up the plinth by the side of the horse. Then when she had been struggling for a few minutes, she noticed me standing there, and said "how did you get up there?" . "There are stairs" I said.
She:" couldn't you have told me that earlier?".

Then I descended and after some more clicking, it was time to leave. We got back into the bus, but got out the same instant as our destination was very close by.

The chariot that inspired the Konark sun temple.

The Floods:A Flashback Two years later, What I saw, Or My views on the Floods: Day 4

Woke up in the safe, but currentless house. Today, all four of us drove down to Raghu Thatha Prema Patti's, and had breakfast with them. December 4th, 2015.
The day was spent talking, and helping my grandparents, uncle and cousins out of their stressed mood. The ground floor of theirs was gone, but salvaging it would be attempted.
That afternoon, my mother and grandfather went, with my uncle, taking Raghu thatha's car,  to assess the damage. Whole they were gone, I talked to my cousin, getting the whole story of what happened from the 1st morning, to the afternoon of the 3rd, when we came to get them.
On the morning of the 1st  after coming back from school, my cousins had moved everything up a foot, on raised pieces of wood, or other items that were expendable, expecting a foot of water at most.

The next morning, the water had risen an inch at 6:45. My uncle had already moved the bar fridge, full of water bottles, and some provisions, to the first floor, so he assumed they would be fine.
Within ten minutes, the water had gone up a foot, and was still rising. My cousins watched in horror as the water rose around all the cars, quickly filling up around the windows, and upto the bonnet. Petrol could be seen slowly leaving the car, in colourful pools around it.
They grabbed the dog, put her inside a basket, and with some things in their hands, they waded out into the water, which was now chest deep. They kept everything on the steps leading up to my grandparents house, and by the time they had gone back for a second trip, the water had risen another foot, and only my uncle was able to walk. They decided not to risk a third trip.
A lot of books, moved onto table tops, were lost, as was some furniture, and a majority of the electronics in the kitchen.
Once everyone was safely on the second floor, my grandmother called the security guard at her office. He reported that in the early hours of the morning, water had started entering the building(right against the Adayar river), and entering the basement, where my father and grandmother had their offices. The guard had been able to take only a few things off the table top, and the computers, before the water had completely filled up the basement. All the books my grandparents had collected on architecture over the last 50 years were gone.

That day, they did very little, just conserving the little battery they had on their phones, and using one phone, with my grandfathers sim, the only one which worked.
That night, in the silence, they sat on the balcony and had dinner. As they did, they heard boatmen down below demand thousands of rupees to rescue people. These people, desperate to get out, were agreeing to anything they asked for.

The next morning, we came and got them.

Back to December 4th.
My mother came back and reported on what she had seen. The fridge had toppled, most of the electronics were all over the house, and so was the furniture. Only the bar, made of old railway sleepers, could be salvaged. The glass cabinet was on its side. Strangely enough, they managed to upright it so gently, no glass was broken!
The fridge had only one item in it that had not gone bad: the butter. The Amul butter was ok enough to put on bread right there! Wierd.

We spent the next few days at Gandhi nagar. Ten days after the 3rd, around 12th or 13th of December, they moved back to Saidapet. My grandmother and father then cleaned out their offices, and within a few months of each other, moved out.
Things are back to normal now. Its been two years. Acts of heroism happendd those four days that are now part of the folklore of the city. People gave up space for strangers, or did acts of kindness they normally would not have. The city has been proud of how it coped during those four days of floods. For those four days were when we were affected most. the recent was the after-effects, and rightly should we be proud. No one from outside the state dared send any help. The centre did not speak about it in assembly, though media gave it some amount of attention.
The city lives on, proud, and rearing its head high. It knows it can take on whatever adversity is thrown at it, for we are a city that does not divide, and only unites, especially in times of difficulty.

Stop 1: Sarangapani temple

Early morning. 6am.The second day of our Kumbakonam trip began. About 13 of us were going on an extra trip, to 'some temple'.
We ended up at the Sarangapani temple, opposite Ramanujan's house.
This is a Chola era temple but reputed to be far older, renovated by Govinda Dikshitar in the 16th century, so it has both Nayak and Chola inscriptions, and pillars. Spotted a chariot inside, but no photos allowed.
We were back by 7, and ready to start the day with the rest of the group.

The temple Ther (car)

Front vijaynagar mandapam

An inscription from in front of the temple

The base of the Gopuram

A four arched bridge over the Kaveri seen(and passed on/by)both days.