The Trichy-V.Koil-Guruvayoor Trip 16.02.09 Part 1

We started off at about 9 30 am for Trichy Junction and traveled to Mailaduthurai by train. The Jan Shatabdi express actually came from Coimbatore and had only one Air-Conditioned chari car. The seats were brown and once again, the railway’s deviation from blue looked great. It seems like there is a definite shift in the Railways mindset, atleast as far as the furnishing is concerned. Chithi had made mullangi sambar saadam, curd rice, vendaikkai curry and vazhaikkai chips for brunch. To go with the curd-rice, we had puli-ingi oorugai, once again, it a bit of jaggery in it and tasted great. From Mayavaram, Saravanan, a cabbie, took us to Vaitheeswaran Koil.

We were put up at Balambika Lodge, yet another new lodge at the ambal sannathi street. It seems like two more houses in the agraharam is giving way to lodges and hopefully, that would bring down the prices of the rooms a little bit – Rs.800 for an air-conditioned room in V.Koil somehow seems to be a bit too much.

We visited the temple in the evening at about 5:30 pm. While entering the huge temple through the ambal sannathi street, you have go around the temple kulam. The kulam itself is quite huge in size as shown in the 1st picture on top. Note the domes on top around the pathway of the kulam. Also note the two Rajagopurams behind. There are about 15-20 temples in India with four Rajagopurams and V.Koil is one of them. However, it seems like this is the only temple where all the four Rajagopurams are in the same line (I don’t know for sure, I’m just guessing here). In most temples, the four Rajagopurams would be on the four walls of the outer praharam of the temple. However, here only two are in the outer praharam (on the east and western side). The other two are also on the eastern and western side, on the next inner praharam.

Take a look at the 2nd picture from top. No wonder Samanvitha says “Baachu chithapa is a Vaadhyar Mama”!!!!! Right behind me is the Karpaga Vinagayar. He is actually quite a Kaarya Siddhi Vinagayar as far as I’m concerned. We had no hopes of getting the Bank Audit last year on some technical grounds. However, dad prayed to this Vinagayar stating that he would break 108 coconuts for the Vinagayar and against all odds, we got the Bank Audits last year! He mentioned that we should be doing it this year also and you know what, our firm has been classified as a stage II firm (meaning we could be auditing bigger branches) even though it was technically impossible!!!!!

Anirudh has been talking about the Yaanai for the past several days, however, when he saw Mriganayaki (see 3rd picture from top), he was too frightened to go near it.

The 4th from top picture below shows the back side of the Muthukumaraswami sannadhi. It is interesting to note that only Grihasthas do archana and harathi for Muthukumaraswamy, bachelors are not allowed to do it.

The 5th picture from top shows Angarakan Sannadhi which was constructed only about a decade back. Previously Angarakan was in the side next to Pazhani andavar sannadhi. Once again, people have not bothered to ensure harmony of the new construction with the existing temple architecture.