I had to make myself sleep at around 10 in the night, or at least make the effort to achieve the impossible. I have a strange body clock, it refuses to switch off before 4 am. But I still tried to give it a go, the laptop switched off at 9:30, bathed at 9:45, hit the bed at 10. As is usually the case, the eyelids kept fluttering open every 5 minutes. I guess somewhere around midnight I was finally able to embrace sleep. If you thought I have trouble getting to sleep, getting out of it was an even bigger project; the dear body clock refused to switch off in the night, and also refused to turn on in the morning (if you’re think I’m talking of morning woody here, then I’ve got one word for you – dirty). The first 2 alarm bursts went unnoticed, but god bless the persistence of the third one, that finally woke me up. It never came to my mind to buy an alarm clock, the alarms in the cellphone were used as a normal proxy. Probably a good thing too as I can’t throw down the phone every morning to shut off the damn alarm.
Now this was going to be close, first up hot coffee, my brain doesn’t come out of hibernation till caffeine caresses it, ah lovely caffeine, can’t imagine a life without you. You can imagine the scene from the cartoons, where the animated character gets a bright idea, with the light bulb above the head, and the character’s face lights up with a bling, well the coffee hit is like that transformation for me.
Brushed, bath done in record time and checked the bag –
2 bananas, 2 apples – check (never leave for the unknown without proper nutrition to survive atleast a few hours)
A liter of lemon tang – check
2 nutrition bars – check (its chocolate, and nutrition combined, enough said)
Cap, shades – check
Sunscreen – CHECK
A magazine for the train journey – check
Wallet, cell – check
And I’m off, I reach the Kodambakkam station at 6:20 & watch from the far end of the station as my train ran past, no use running for that now, just have to wait for the next suburban one.It just so happens that I didn’t get one in the next 15 minutes, while I watched 2 return trains pass by. Guess Murphy spent a lot of time on train platforms too while he came up with his one liners. Finally I got my train for Park at 6:40, I needed the 7:15 out of Central, meaning I had roughly about 35 minutes to get to central, buy a ticket, & search for the Bangalore bound Brindavan express… Fortunately I had factored in a buffer of 10 minutes, the train ride took about 17 minutes, & I was in the ticketing queue at 6:55 AM. Never imagined that the general class ticket would cost 50 bucks, costs just about 13 Rupees for Gummidipundi which is also 2 hours away. I asked 4 people at the station, a cop, the ticket counter guy for the train, which just happened to be in the adjoining building at platform 6. I’m a lazy bum, but I broke into a sprint, darting past surprised passerbys, it was 7:10 am and I really did not want to miss this one as the next train would be at 11 only. All said and done, the train eventually pulled out of the station only at 7:40 am, so much for my Usain Bolt impression!
I’m the guy who would probably not even run to be on time at my own wedding, even if the betrothed decided to turn to the best man due to my delay. But this was a train, so there. I’m not a frequent train traveller, most of my journeys are on reserved tickets, so I was a bit lost on the station. I figured the coaches marked ‘UR’ stood for unreserved and joined the hordes in clambering onto one. A nice hot day, and I was at the gate again, watching the stations pass by slowly. The train took almost 3 hours to get to Katpadi station where I took a shared auto for 15 bucks that dropped me in front of the fort 3-4 kms away. I first visited the temple inside the fort, Jalagandeeswarar Temple to escape the sun. the temple architecture is quite something, with the pillars depicting a lot of different deities. Took a walk outside the wall around the inner temple compound, having a lush grass cover, felt nice to walk on. Inside the temple I found people lighting diyas at a wall, which had a rack with space for a lot of the, I paid 4 rupees and lighted a couple too. The temple building inside had the main deity (don’t ask me which) aroung which a circular path has various other deities carved out. Sat down in the small hall just next to this room for a few minutes with an old couple as I watched people carry on their ritual exercises.
Took a long walk on the fort wall, you get a good view of the hills in the distance, the bustling city traffic, and the moat filled with water around the fort. You can even walk ON the wall, rather than walking on the path inside it, which is what I tried. Had a small snack at the back of the fort beneath a big banyan tree which proved to be a nice resting place. There are not really many places to go down and explore, most of them filled up with heavy shrubbery now. I did walk through one of these areas, but it’s a bit of an exercise in itself, and doesn’t lead to any place exquisite. Most of the fort’s inside is now some sort of office area, or museum, or some institute, so I decided to venture out after the long circular walk on the fort wall.
Looked at the local shops before coming to rest at a big church some 400 meters from the fort gates. Here I asked a few locals for the directions to the Golden temple. So I took a bus from the bus stand opposite the church and in 25 minutes got dropped in front of the Sripuram temple. I had read that this temple has more gold than the olden temple at Amritsar, so decided to check this out as well. First, off with the shoes, deposit the bags, cellphone and camera at the place near the front gate. You can join special lines by paying 100, 200 and more amounts, I decided to go the common man’s path and joined the long free line. For the next 20 minutes you trudge along in a wire mesh bound path until they put you up in a room with chairs. Not just an ordinary room , this one has a BIG tv, fans, even ice cream and pop corn vendors inside it, and a restroom attached. If you’ve ever seen an airport hangar, it was like that, complete with the asbestos ceiling, and wire mesh for walls. The entire hangar was divided into 8-9 rooms of dimensions of roughly 80 feet by 40 feet each, and in one of these was I made to sit. And they literally locked the doors of each room, seriously lock and key! I was already deriding myself for coming here when I saw the board that said that waiting time was 2.5 hours, great! I sat in the room for another 25 minutes when they let the doors at the other end open, the crowd rushed forth and so did i. and once again in a long queue we trudged forth, but this time on side there was a wall. The weather thankfully improved, and there were strong winds now accompanying rains. The security at the place was quite tight, you had to pass through 2 metal checks before getting in. Now I finally landed on the star shaped path I had read of, with no walls on either side, just the asbestos roof above, and cobbled path below, I enjoyed the view, the garden maintained beautifully, lush green, flowers in the rows, and rain falling with overcast skies. I walked slowly as I enjoyed the rain drops hitting me from the sides with the wind, a mass of people stopping and sitting for rest as well. When you get to the main temple its an oval shaped path separating you from the temple with water pool in between. And as is the case in most temple, you can’t stand here for more than 10-15 seconds else the temple caretakers and other people start shouting at you. So you really don’t get time here to admire the amount of gold spent on the structure.
I looked through the small shops that were set up on the path selling puja preparations. It almost looked like a Clinique counter with the nice ladies behind the counter, and the wares displayed perfectly, and the setting was also similar. I paid 30 bucks to get a small book on the history of the temple, as they had no postcards, and this was the only thing which had snaps in it.Thankfully, it only took me less than 2 hours to visit the temple and the rain had toned down a notch, so I ate a boiled corn cob, and boarded my bus to the train station to get back to dear Chennai at 5 in the evening.
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