The famous Meenakshi temple at Madurai, in the south is the centre of fascination and attraction for tourists all over the country as well as the world.
We had our stay at Thekkady, about 160 km from the temple. The twists and turns of the road made Mom and Soham made them vomit, so they decided better not to opt for the trip. I and Dad made courage to visit the architectural masterpiece, which we had not initially planned of visiting. Though the road was very troublesome, the beauty and elegance of this 3000 year old temple had facinated us.
It is a temple dedicated to Godess Parvati, who is known as Meenakshi and her congort, Shiva named her Sundareshwar (beautiful diety). The temple forms the lifeline of the old and ancient antiquity and culture of the Tamilian civilisation. On an average, 15000 visitors per day pay a visit to this temple to seek the blessings of the Lord.
The journey from Thekkady to the temple was going to be a four hour journey. We had decided to leave the resort at around 5 o'clock in the morning. But as usual we were delayed and started our journey at 6:30 am. On our way nature's beauty and the colourful flowers, tall festooned trees, deep plunging ravines and snow-white waterfalls had caught our attention and we were busy clicking photographs. It seemed as if time was running very fast and no sooner did we reach the temple than we sprang out from our seats.walking some distance we reached the base of the temple and to my surprise a 160 ft tall beautiful elegantly carved stone structure stood in front of me.on it was magnificiently carved statues of lords, saints etc ,which signified Tamil culture.The temple is geographic and ritual centre of ancient city of Madurai and one of the largest temple complex of Tamil Nadu.
The temple complex is divided into number of concentric quadrangular enclosures contained by magnificiently built high masonary walls. Its unique part is that it has 4 gates facing 4 direction i.e. east, west, north and south.
To add to it, the temple is surrounded by number of gopurams (gateway towers), the tallest of which is about 170 feet. These were built by the Pandyan dynasty. These gopurams bear on it thousands of statues of animals, saints, devils in bright hues.
The main centre of attraction is the main Meenakshi shrine, situated at the centre. It is protected by 4 minor towers from 4 sides. In the very long que, we were wating patiently just to have a glance at the Lord. The Meenakshi shrine has emralded hue, black stone image. It bore a diamond as well as sparkling golden ornaments.We could click beautiful pictures to retain them forever.
We also payed our tribute to Lord Shiva temple.Its beauty is hard to describe in words, for that one must visit it. We were welcomed by gold plated statues, who stood patiently folding their hands. Our joy knew no bounds when visited the hall of thousand pillars. It was built by Ariyanatha Mudoliar in 1569. To make that structure, engineering and architectural skills must have been blended together. This hall contains 995 pillars (and not 1000). The pillars bore beautiful sculptures of horses, elephants which had been illuminated by dim yellow light. These pillars have a narrow passage which guided us to a magnificient statue of the famous Natraja. Dressed in a yellow dhoti, Lord Shiva looked elegant. We bid him goodbye and came out of the hall.
Outside the hall towards the west, are 5 musical pillars (995+5=1000). Each pillar when struck, produced a specific pitched musical note. On the roof and the side walls of the temple, were miniature paintings, which supposedly symbolised mythology.
Satisfactorily, we came out of the temple and thought, ' Yeah! were lucky enough to look at this whole temple in 3 hours.' But to our surprise we came to know that we had hardly seen 1/3rd of the temple. It really takes time.
Our body was very tired and thirsty but our minds were not ready to make a move. Finally getting frustrated in the scrotching sun (about 40C temp.), we decided to bid a final goodbye to the beautiful temple and left.
On reaching our resort we showed joyously the photographs to Soham and Mom and they could also visualize the temple in front of them. But definately, it cannot give them the true pleasure and satisfaction of seeing the temple with their own eyes and admiring the work and the efforts done to build it.
I feel that if anyone is thinking of visiting a holy place, Meenakshi temple is a great place.
- by Mohit, Jayant
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