63 : A Night in Mylapore

A Preface :

Today, the 17th day of march 2011 was selected as a famous religious day for Mylapore- Vaasigal .

63 die hard fans called Naayanmars , pay their respects to Lord Shiva alias Kabaleeshwar by going around his sacred place of worship. And it starts by 3.30 P.M, ends by late night 10-11 P.M

My story :

Let's come to my story now. Like always, after playing a dozen of TT games at office,i started home with a thought of dinner. After i arrived home, i was greeted by some awesome fried onion aroma, immediately i sat for dinner, had some delicious onion rava dosa. While having dinner, mom said " Hey it seems aruvathi moovar is happening in Mylapore, i have never seen it though " I asked " what's that ? ! " Then my mother explained to me that it is some kind of procession of the statues of 63 Naayanmars, and people flock to worship them. She also added that it happens like a festival.

I was always intrigued by opportunities to witness these kinds of things, so i thought, why not go there ,see what is happening and why is it such a big deal. "Let's go" was my immediate response after the curiosity rose. Armed with a cameraphone, i started my journey to Mylapore in a quest to capture lively stuff that was in progress.

After reaching the Luz signal, we faced a roadblock, seems all roads to the temple were blocked. I was surprised because it was like 9o clock, and i could still see a lot of people going towards the temple. So, i parked my bike in the main road and me n my mom started to use the nataraja service. While entering the road towards the temple, i could see a huge amount of people walking both ways, i.e inwards and outwards.

There were a lot of makeshift shops selling toys, clay pots and other small fancy stuff, mostly toys on the sidewalk. And free water and food were served in intermediate places called "Pandhals". Mom said since it's an auspicious day, people give away free food to pilgrims, termed as " Annadhaanam ".

As we proceeded further, i could see a lot more people, and i caught a slight glimpse of the procession that was taking place. Now i could see lot more plates strewn all over the place, and the road started to become sort of wet from all the garbage. I had reached North Mada street by then.

At the start of this street was an announcement " Pandhal " where whoever is lost,mostly children, will report the announcer of their missing state, and the announcer will shout out their name,place and their parents' names and ask them to collect their child from that place. All announcements happen in a monotonic and a funny way. You have to be there to experience it haha :D

Now i could see some two three Nayanmars sitting on their thrones and letting people worship them. As i moved forward, the number of people moving towards my direction increased manifold. I moved forward to a place where , it seems , the wife or Kabaali, Karpagambal was placed in a chariot and moved forward.
Also,I happened to get close to a traditional lamp thats non existent in these days of emergency lights. Here it is :
And after passing through Mrs. Kabali, His highness Kabali himself was the next chariot, and boy was it big ? Talk about male chauvinism! He was surrounded by a ton of humans, one of them was me . And besides Sir Kabali, there was this funny purple one - eyed robot that was giving He was stationery for sometime but suddenly they decided to move him forward. This is when all hell broke loose, every one of them wanted to have a glimpse of him AGAIN. And if you take the average crowd there, most of them were like families with 2-3 kids with them, and they were battling it out with others for space to watch Kabali just move forward. WTF !!
And an innocent wannabe photographer ( :P ) like me got stuck in that bloody stampede. Fortunately since i am very tall, i wade through the sea of humans with ease, but while doing so, i found many people got unnecessarily angry, children all around cried, couple of drunk buggers tried to cop a feel. Literally i felt like i was in the worst place ever. Silently moving forward slowly, all i could think was " When will i get out of this mess ? " Staying on that thought, i saw this crazy Tavil player banging the instrument with utmost passion like a rockstar :
Fortunately i got out of everything by taking a small detour after struggling for 10-15 minutes. Nobody likes getting pushed around, right ?

Intelligently enough, my mom found a sneaky getaway route from all this pandemonium, it was called the Kutcheri lane.
This was my path to freedom. This lane gave me a glimpse of the traditional Agrahaaram that is built around temples. And there i was , breathing happily , out of all this mess. Many questions arose in my mind. Why do people go through all this shit for religion ? How come people forget their own creations' well being ? Lots and lots of questions. Anger. Pity.

This night in Mylapore was definitely disappointing to say the least.