Monday, April 19, 2010

The mini pilgrimage in March 2010 – Summary

I have obviously not kept up my word of trying to blog more frequently. So, before time runs out, let me chronicle the remaining facets of the trip and move on to other topics soon.

From the previous post on this trip, you would have come to know that my mother just found out that her purse along with cash was missing.

After frantic searches of the various bags and even the car, we finally concluded that it was indeed lost. And the venue was most likely the temple in Tirumanacheri.

We reached the hotel and then called up the bank to get her ATM card blocked, since that was also there in the purse. We got the confirmation after multiple calls to them, that the card had indeed been blocked and also that no transactions had been done using that card. The monetary loss though was around 6K INR.

The rest of the evening was spent in taking rest, meeting up with a cousin and aunt who dropped by to the hotel. We then visited one of the local temples and called it a night.

The next day, we went to Kumbakonam. The main purpose was to visit Swami Malai where we hadnt been to in a long long time. And since we were going that far, we also had quick halts at Tirunageshwaram and Uppili Appan Kovil. These two temples are basically 2 gears on a car apart.

Swami Malai temple is quite different. It is on a small hillock kind of area, though it could very well be that the King who built it, basically just built it at an elevated level. After we climbed the two steeps sets of stairs, we bought special darshan tickets and waited in line. It was a perfect time to be there since the abhishekam was in progress. Afterwards, they did a complete alangaaram to Lord Subramanyam and believe you me, it was awesome. The one really different piece of decoration that I noticed was the headgear. It was not a crown nor was it the usual Indian style turban or mundaasu. The headgear looked exactly like what we have seen in pictures of George Washington or Robert Clive!

Anyways, we left the temple and had a 10 second drive-thru around the MahaMaham lake and then returned to the hotel. In the evening, we dropped in to my "mother's house" though due its very dilapitated state, we couldnt enter inside.

We left for Chennai that very night - the night of March 5th by Rathi Meena again. The guys once again, drove down to Chennai in a matter of 4.5 hours and I was able to continue my sleep on Saturday morning for some more time. I had to then go to Mylapore and pick up my car from Raghu before heading out to my project party, which incidentally also gave my first experience with paint ball. Paint ball is a game that looks quite easy to play, but like all games, is very difficult when you actually play it!

Anyways, it was a quite a hectic weekend for me and also for my parents. But one that we hope would yield the desired result soon.

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