Temple Rush: Chennai

Welcome to Chennai… it's hot…it's humid…it's boring! That is the common refrain spoken by all living above the Vindhyas whenever anyone talks about the city. In my two visits to Chennai recently, I found that it’s clean, very clean; it does have a hot and humid climate but tell me of another city in India which does not have the same weather except, of course, those in the foothills of the Himalayas in the north and the hill stations; also it is as interesting as any other metropolis and, mind it, I have seen and lived in all the major ones for decades, be it Delhi, Kolkata or Mumbai. There is so much to see and explore that by the time you have done a round of interesting places, you realise how little you have actually seen of this historical and cultural epicentre. Here’s a quick glimpse of the temple rush we experienced.

San Thome Church, that was declared a National Shrine in 2004 in Mylapore, was our first stop. This Church is dedicated to Saint Thomas who was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ and is said to have come to India to preach the Gospel and was buried here in AD 72. Travel diaries of Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, speak about the tomb. In 1521, the Portuguese sent missionaries in search of the tomb of Thomas the Apostle and found it to be in a neglected state. They built a shrine over the tomb which was visited by Francis Xavier in 1545. The church was made into a cathedral in 1606 by Pope Paul V. in 1896, the church was rebuilt in Gothic style. Pope Pius II elevated the church to the rank of minor basilica in 1956 and Pope John Paul II visited the place in 1986.

The church, painted in white, is one of the biggest you would see in the land. The inside has a simple and serene look with the Lord Jesus on the cross wearing a magnificent crown like a king. There is a gold-plated statue of Mother Mary on the left side of the altar and is referred to as Our Lady of Mylapore or locally as Mylai Matha. Behind the church is a nice museum on the life of St. Thomas and beneath it is the path that takes you right under the altar of the church wherein lies the tomb of the apostle. There are only two other basilicas that have been built over the tomb of an apostle. One of them is St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and the other being the Church of St. James the Great in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Our next temple hop was again in Mylapore, the Kapaleeshwar Temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva, said to have been built originally around seventh century AD. The word Kapaleeshwar is a combination of two words, Kapalam which means head and Eshwar which means god. Kapaleeshwar also means the King of Ascetics who stands with a bowl of a skull (kapala) in his hands and starts the re-creation of the universe out of his grace. According to the Puranas, during the meeting of deities atop Mount Kailash, Lord Brahma failed to show due respect to Shiva. Shiva plucked off one of the five heads (kapal) of Brahma who came down to the site of Mylapore and installed a lingam to please the angered lord. According to a regional legend, Shiva’s consort Parvati had turned into a peahen due to a curse. She had prayed to the Siva lingam with her beak before being transformed back into goddess Karpagambal. We were not able to see the peahen statue or the celestial tree, said to be in he temple premises, which grants everything asked for.

At the entrance of the Kapaleeshwar Temple, built in Dravidian style, is a 120 feet gopuram adorned with beautiful mythological figures. There is a smaller entrance on another side which faces the sacred tank.

Our friendly auto driver suggested that we should complete the day’s circuit with a visit to the Vadapalani Andavar Temple that is dedicated to Lord Murugan (Karthika). Originally started in a thatched hut with a painted picture of Lord Murugan in 1890 by Annaswami Nayakar, it underwent major reconstruction in 1920. The temple is built in traditional lines of South Indian temples with the rajagopuram at the main entrance and a huge tank in the vicinity. This is one place where we found a huge number of devotees and managed to get into the paid line which got us a faster darshan of the sanctum sanctorum where you get to see a smiling Murugan who is standing and blessing all the devotees. Incidentally, he even wears a footwear.

Due to paucity of time and also stories of long waits and queues at Tirupati, which sounded quite daunting, we got a darshan of Lord Balaji and Sri Padmawati Thayaar at T Nagar. These two deities are exact replicas of the TTD temples at Tirupati.

One day, a friend of old, invited me to a dance performance by her daughter. I had not seen a live Bharatnatyam dance performance for very long and made my way to Narada Gana Sabha to witness the same. But before going there, lest be made to look like an ignorant fool, did a little homework on this dance form. Bharatanatyam is an Indian classical dance form based on religious and spiritual themes.

Dancer: Kum. Ranganayaki Vijayaraghavan

Bharatanatyam dance is broken down into three very broad divisions: Nritta (pure dance), Nritya (conveys a meaning to the audience through hand gestures) and Natya (consists of the elements of drama). Bharatanatyam style is noted for its fixed upper torso, bent legs, and flexed knees combined with footwork, and a vocabulary of sign language based on gestures of hands, eyes, and face muscles. The dance is accompanied by music and a singer, and typically the dancer's guru is present as the director-conductor of the performance and art.

What I witnessed that evening was quite magical. The graceful movements of the dancer, the mellifluous music in the background with the singing created a devotional atmosphere in the auditorium. The performance started off with alarippu or the beginning or the warm up portion and ended with tilaana which is the fast-paced rhythm with sculpturesque positions and in between were some beautiful compositions. The abhinaya on Tulasidas’ Thumaka Thumaka Ram Chandra was performed with such elegance that I kept humming the song much after the show and the scene of the dancer enacting Kaushalya rocking baby Ram on her thigh kept running in my mind over and over. The biggest portion of the performance was enacting the story of Salabega, who Muslim by birth, was one of the greatest devotees of Lord Jagannath and composed many bhajans in honour of the Lord. The legend says that after spending a year at Vrindavan as an ascetic, he was returning to Puri and wanted to see the Ratha Yatra festival of Lord Jagannath when he fell ill. Feeling helpless, he prayed to the Lord requesting Him to wait till he was able to reach Puri. On the day of the Return Cart Festival, the cart of Lord Jagannath did not move until Salabega arrived. A remarkable story narrated through an outstanding performance by the young girl on stage.

You must be wondering why I included Bharatanatyam in the Temple Run. The answer is easy, my friends. This dance was performed in early days in temples of South India and was later brought out into the open. The sadhana of the learners and the themes are purely religious and what amazed me was the on-the- dot start and ending of the performance which showed how well the performance was choreographed and timed…the devotion is extraordinary and the results of years of hard work were evident even for a layman like me that evening. Yesterday, the world has lost one of the greatest performers of Bharatanatyam… Yamini Krishnamurthy…I take this opportunity to offer my humble tribute to the great danseuse.

During my morning daily walks, I was fascinated by a school whose name I had heard a lot. This was the Good Shepherd Convent. I was reminded of a video shared by a friend about a speaker who said that parents and teachers cannot engineer the personalities, IQ and academic qualifications of children even if they try. The children are not a blank slate on which they get to write. Parents and teachers should be like shepherds to unique individuals and not as engineers who have designed the sheep. Shepherds are powerful people who pick the best pastures where the sheep will graze and develop and grow. They determine whether they are appropriately nourished and protected. So, it was first the school’s name Good Shepherd that attracted me and then I saw a huge board put up by the alumni celebrating the centenary year of this wonderful school which caught my attention. Now you might ask me again, why a school as a temple? The answer is simple, if India has to develop and grow as a nation, it needs to deliver to its children the fundamental right of good education and initial elementary education of school has to be prioritised. While the first PM of this country called Bhakra Nangal Dam as one of the temples of modern India, I would say it is now time to designate schools as the real temples of tomorrow’s modern developed India. The ‘Good Shepherds’ have to be recognised and rewarded. Only an educated India can truly take pride to stand tall in the comity of great nations.

SS