Yercaud - Day 2 - Rajarajeshwari Temple, Pagoda Point, Brothers' Academy, Sun Dial

Coffee beans along the drive.

The cool shady estates flanking the road...

More Coffee...some arrangements seemed better than the ones I had photographed. If I were the one driving, I would have stopped exactly where the 'picture perfect' was...

These two... Passed by many pretty ones. The lighting was perfect and sun mild and golden...but everyones said, while we return you take pictures, not now... when we returned, the sun was white hot and the picture, much less prettier... Timing is everything in life.




Rajarajeswari Temple... After the Mahameru temple and its beauty, this was unattractive...But I have to mention that I was surprised to see Muslim women in Burqas entering the temple and coming out of it! When I asked, they said, 'just like that...' and smiled



Miniature sculpture of shiva


Pagoda Point - A vantage point atop a hill, gets its name because of these stones piled up in the shape of little pagodas

View from there...




Some temple, there too...

Trying my best to look good :)


What a pretty house!


Montfort School - some famous fellows studied here.. forgot the names...

We are on entering the premises of an institude, an academy where Christian brothers study... We were asked not to take pictures

I enjoy defying rules. Such a beautiful well maintained place! One thing I love about Christian institutions! Their discipline, their cleanliness...



We had to pass through this in order to reach a vantage point from where you could see this elephant shaped hill...

This superintelligent structure gives you time. You look at where the shadow falls and depending on the month and date, you add/subtract a few minutes to the time indicated and you have the correct time! The sun dial!




One last stolen picture before leaving the premise!

Inside That Baggage

Those hard, sharp, bitter stones. Grains actually.
Inside the baggage. The size of a pouch.
They hurt. Chafed my back.
I had been carrying them for years now.

As time progressed, the pouch gained weight. Of a baggage. The composition of the stones inside was such.
There was more to them. Once you put them inside and closed the pouch, their time stopped ticking. As far as you were concerned, of course.
Therefore they would remain things of the present and never become the past. Your present.
And with time, they gained weight.
So the sooner you threw them away, before they became heavier and heavier, the better off you were. But (here is the catch), for you to throw them away, they had to become things of the past. If you thought of them as things of the present, you could not throw them.
So how would these stones become things of the past? You had to open the pouch. And look inside. For a few seconds. Then, they would catch up in time and become as old, as grown, as they were. Like a movie fast forwarded.
Again, not all of them. Not the ones that had frozen in time. But most of them.
And…, this solution to the riddle, was a secret. It revealed itself to the less intelligent ones. Or it was discovered by sheer accident. The more intelligent would miss it. More often than not.

There was a third possibility too.

So this pouch of mine, gained weight. And the dead weight had become part of my parcel.
I had gotten so used to the baggage, it did not seem to matter. But once in a way, when I turned my attention to it, it became suddenly heavy and I had to drag my feet in order to keep moving.

One fine day, just like that, I opened the bag. It had to be an accident. For I certainly belonged to the league of the more intelligent.
And lo! there were flowers inside. And two stones. Frozen in time.
Stone turning into flowers! This was unheard of!
Opening the pouch, aging them and casting them away would have been good enough. But flowers? (The third possibility…)

But where went all the stones?
I distinctly remember picking them up and putting them inside.
That’s what I did whenever a stone was pelted at me.
The ones I deserved, I would not pick up.
But the ones I didn’t deserve, I definitely gathered, to carry with me. in my pouch.

Where went those stones?
The stones had long transmuted/turned into flowers.
Time had, surely stopped for them; but only as far as I was concerned.
Within the pouch, they had grown - and turned into flowers.

So they had been exerting no weight actually.
But I had felt the weight all along, no doubt. Because, to me they were stones still.
I was not aware of the transmutation happening inside.
All I knew was that I had put in the stones myself and they were there.

How I had been needlessly carrying their weight all these years!
if only I had opened the bag before!

Now I was free.
How light I felt! What a relief it was! And what a pleasant surprise the flowers were!

Now I have only two stones to carry. The rest that turned into flowers shall adorn me and their fragrance will permeate the air all around.

It was an accident.
I met all of them. One evening.
The ones that had hurt me, offended me and made me cry. Years ago. None of which I deserved. I had dropped them into my baggage and closed it.
And they had stopped in time. My time. They had remained the hurtful, evil, malicious people. Everyone said, throw away the baggage. How could I? You throw away the baggage if it is a matter of the past. If it is your present, you cant throw away your present. And once you shut the baggage, shut the people from your life, turn your face away, they remain forever the grotesque people they were when you last saw them. Because after that, you shut the door. Tight.
If you open the baggage and peek inside, you may see that they have changed. They may not be your best friends still, but they are no longer wearing that grotesque expression.
And then, when you see their present, that part of them you were carrying in the baggage becomes a thing of the past and you can cast them away.
But some of them, those people that never change, will still stare back at you with the same malice. Those, you will carry with you, but they will be few in number.

But what happened to me, was the third possibility.
That evening, they were smiling and waving.
They had changed so much. They had grown so much. They had mellowed with time!
Some of them stood with their arms stretched out towards me.
I don’t know how long they had been standing like that. Waiting for me to open the door I had shut on them. Tight.
If only I had looked back earlier, I would have known.

But now, I had done better than just throwing away the baggage. I had flowers to call mine.
What a respite from the festering wounds caused by all that chafing.
It was an experience! A blessing.

But what’s with the riddle revealing itself to the less intelligent only??
That has to do with transcending intellect. The intellect spawns arguments about some people never changing. It admits (of course, since it is intelligent) that time morphs everyone, but then (there again!), the core, the basic character remains the same, a crow does not turn a peacock; snakes, though they may grow old, remain snakes… The realm of the more intelligent is full of ideas such as these…

The meeting with flowers happens to those who transcend intellect, give the crow, the snake and the peacock, an equal chance and accept them all.

For the rest like me, accidents save our lives.

Yercaud - Day 2 - Shevaroy Temple, Tripurasundari Mahameru Temple

A guide had been arranged to show us around. The first destination was the highest point in Yercaud where Seevaroyan temple was to be found. The temple itself is not much – a narrow and dark cave having the God Servarayan and the Goddess Kaveri inside. But the drive to the top through winding hillside roads was enjoyable.

As we reached the top…
This place has some mineral and for the first time, in my life, I saw mining sites…


We reached the top. Appa and Amma…
Yours truly…
From here we started to another temple nearby… The coffee estates on both sides of the road were picturesque…


We reached this Tripurasundari Mahameru temple – a very beautiful temple situated in the midst of a cultivated and well maintained garden. Clean and dry. One of the shrines towards our right had a deity with a very tranquil ‘Mukhamudra’ (facial expression). I have mentioned it in my earlier article but such perfect expression is the ultimate goal of every sculptor and very difficult to attain.







The temple has a Shreechakra. The shreechakra was first instated by Shankaracharya. Many temples took to having one. It a design carved on a stone slab laid within the shrine before a deity and worshipped daily.



A villa next to the temple.

Zooming Out

The process of growing older is a process of moving from worm’s eye view to acquire bird’s eye view.

Of seeing the panorama, in which boulders appear not like mountains, but sand-grains.
Of seeing the larger context. In which the once rough, threatening edges now seem harmless lines.
The once sharp heterogeneity of people gradually softens into homogeneity.

Therefore, I am sure, my friend, distances will gradually diminish, differences will dissolve and most of those things will cease to matter.

Differences that appear significant now will become small then.
Gaps that seem wide now will become narrow then as we look down from above.

Sooner or later we will see that we were saying the same thing, after all. We are not so dissimilar after all.

Which is why I know, we will be comfortable with each other. And eventually move closer.
You and I. Who now think, we are so different.
It’s just a matter of time.

‘Our ideologies are so different!’, we’d exclaimed.

How we drifted apart because our views were conflicting.

I cannot stand people with such mentality, I thought.
I am uncomfortable around people who have such opinions, you said.

‘“How did she become your friend”, my friends ask me’, you said.
And how did you stand her? My friends asked me.

You, who have table manners. I, who is clumsy at the table.
You, who wear matching accessories. I, who is too lazy to change handbags every day.
You, who wear the sunscreen. I, who carry that big unfashionable umbrella everywhere I go.

You who love the drag race. I, who think them violent, reckless and annoying.
You who believe porn is creative. I, who believe, voyeurism is a sign of backwardness of civilization.
You who think women actually look good in low cut dresses. I, who think, it does not make sense then, to complain about lecherous men; you provoked them after all.

You who will choose Las Vegas if you were allowed only one vacation before you die the next minute. I, who will choose the Grand Canyon.

You who pity vegetarians for not knowing the real flavor of food.
I, who wonder how you slaughter and butcher every day.

You, who do not believe in saving money. I, who do not believe in wasting.
You, who called that businessman smart. I, who called him cunning.

You who do not like templates. I, who do not want to reinvent the wheel.
You, who asked why we need a common civil code. I, who was infuriated that you asked such a question.

You, who like rock music in the mountains. I, who like the silence.
You, who smoked marijuana in the hills. I, who filled my lungs with the fragrance of the Devdar.
You, who dipped your tired feet in the cool waters of Ganges. I, who, first poured a few drops on my head and touched them to my eyes in reverence.

You, who hate to judge. I, who is proud to be a good judge.
You who think ‘To each, his own’. I who think ‘it’ eliminates the necessity for debate.
You who have divorced religion. I, who think religion is the foundation of society.

You, an individualist. I, a collectivist.
You, for capitalism. I, for socialism.
You modern, westernized. I, traditional and conservative.

You and I. Aloud we proclaim ‘we are so different!’, even as resentment is building up.
We shrug, sigh in exasperation, give up and shake our head, each amazed by the disagreeability of the other.

But it’s alright. I will become quiet for now.
I am in no hurry.

Because as we drift away from this moment that looms large before us now, as years pass, moments like these, on a cosmic scale – that measures time in years and decades – will become tiny specs.
And then, our positions of today, two points at the ends of a longish diameter will seem, in the bird’s eye view, like two comfortable neighbours with hardly a screen to separate them.

The reconciliation of all those contradictions was ever present - in the many things that we had in common; in the commonality of the very ground on which we stood and argued. In our common belongingness to the same generation.
But we took all that common for granted. Our worm's eye view of that present magnified only our differences.

But it’s alright. In retrospection when we will look back, it will be with a bird's eye. And we will realize that those differences were mere molehills that appeared like mountains on that vast plain smooth ground on which we both stood sharing a common space and more importantly a common time of existence.

Sooner or later, my friend, we will see that we were saying the same thing, after all. We were not so dissimilar, after all.
For the process of growing older and wiser, is a process of zooming out; of beginning with the worm’s eye view and finishing with the bird’s eye.

Moreover, the bigger reconciliation awaits us both.
After all the wanderings of our groping identities to fashionable opinions and stylish views, we will at last come home to our truths. Simple, basic, humble, naked truths. And I know, many of my truths will be yours too.