An Enchanting Tale Of Our Tour Of South India-Part 20 Of 20

OUR SOUTH INDIA TOUR IN 1975 (Episode 20 of 20 -FINAL EPISODE)

 

14-hour-long sleeping session and other stories.

 

We got down at Thrissur Railway Station early morning. The pitiful incident of the night before still felt heavy in my heart.

 

Seeing my bleary-eyed swollen face my father rebuked me, “This is the result of keeping awake the whole night looking out of the window. We travel by sleeper coaches to get some rest. I can understand your fascination for keeping your eyes glued to the window during the daytime, but I am at a loss to understand why you do it at nighttime too. What you see in the darkness is beyond me. Now you are fatigued and may not be able to enjoy today’s sightseeing.”

 

I didn’t respond because talking about the pitiful incident that I saw the night before was painful to me. 

 

Trivia about Thrissur

 

The Thrissur city is built around a 65-acre hillock called the Thekkinkaadu Maidaanam which seats a large Hindu Shiva Temple. The name of the deity is Vadukkunathan. However, in this temple, the devotees don’t get to see the lingam. Instead, they see a huge mound of ghee that is about 15 feet high. It is said that the mound is due to the accumulation of ghee offered by devotees as abhisekham over many decades. But the strange thing we noticed was that there was no rotting smell emanating from it. We also observed that the ghee wasn’t melting, even though it was summertime.

 

From Thrissur, we proceeded to Guruvayur which houses the famous Guruvayur Shri Krishna Temple. 

 

14-hour-long sleeping session

We reached Guruvayur at around noon. after having lunch at a restaurant in Thrissur. We checked into a lodge at Guruvayur and the sight of the bed in the room was really welcome. For the first time in this tour, we found that travel fatigue had caught up with us. It was no wonder, as we were on the 29th day of our 32-day long trip. 

 

We hit the bed at 1 p.m. and immediately fell into a deep slumber. We woke up at around 8 p.m. My father enquired about dinner. But we had no energy to venture out. Rather we wanted to continue with our sleep. My father volunteered to go out and bring some idli or dosa. But my mother said there was no need to go out in the rain that was then pouring quite hard. We had a snack of biscuits and other sweets and tidbits and went off to sleep again. The hotel boy came around at 9 p.m. to enquire about dinner but we waved him away. 

 

The next day morning we got up at 3’o clock, after a refreshing sleeping session that lasted for nearly 14 hours. We had to get up early to have the viswaroopa (early morning) darshan of Lord Guruvayurappa. 

 

The early morning visit to the temple was a divine experience. It was amazing to see a couple of beautifully decorated elephants in the corridor of the temple.

 

We also had the opportunity of witnessing ‘Tulabaram’ a special ritual in which the devotee offers a puja item equivalent to his/her weight. The weighing is performed in the temple itself with the help of a huge scale. We saw a lady offering clothes, utensils, oil and other items. She sat on one tray of the scale and the puja items were put up on the other tray. More and more items were added till the scale came to an even balance. 

 

We came out of the temple at 8 a.m. and had our breakfast. My parents wanted to return to the room, but my sister and I wanted to roam around that quaint little town. 

 

While walking down a lane just adjacent to our hotel we saw a lot of red seeds strewn under a tree. It was manjadi seeds (lucky red seeds). Kids collect these and hoard them as treasure. It is used to play games like pallankuzhi. The manjadi seeds belong to Adenanthera pavonina trees that are abundant in Kerala. But for us, it was like finding a treasure trove. We immediately knelt on the ground and started collecting them, much to the amusement of the local people. But we didn’t care. 

 

We came back to the hotel and displayed our treasure to our parents who became excited too.

 

We then bid a fond farewell to Guruvayur and went on to catch the evening train to Erode. From Erode we took a train to Madras, and we reached there on the 19th of June 1975, exactly 32 days after our departure.

 

Thus was our South India Tour of 1975. My sister and I will always remain thankful to our parents for giving us this opportunity of a lifetime.

 

 Hope you enjoyed our journey too.