I'd arrived early in the morning and watched the sun rise over a station concourse that was littered with people, all wrapped up in grey cloths and blankets.
The temples are, indeed, spectacular. There's a great deal of prostrating oneself and walking around pillars numerous times. I have one particular memory of a algae-infested water tank in one. I might be wrong.
The Temple Market is also tremendously famous, lined, as it is, by tailors and other cloth-sellers.
I'm still profoundly deaf and think little of it when I find myself walking at the centre of a rather determined crowd, flying black flags and banners. I quickly catch on when a police van flies through the centre of the crown and dispenses a large number of baton-wielding policemen. Everyone runs in the opposite direction, including myself.
Madurai goes into a degree of shutdown. You can find yourself sitting in a bar/cafe, happily eating an onion dosa when the shutters rattle down to fend off a marrauding crowd of 'the other side'.
I'm also profoundly constipated, by the way.
What to do but checkout and head to Kerala. A bus seems like a good idea. If your idea of a good bus journey is a broken seat in front of you, a leaking roof and an endless array of indians wanting to sit next to you and make friends as you make your way over the Keralan mountains with the skies darkening and the temperature dropping. Kumily (the famous hill station) passes in the torrential night and I arrive to a boxroom in Ernakulam, battered.
Am I enjoying myself? From reading all of this, I'm really not quite sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment