Madurai
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008I arrived into madurai after dark, as I said before its a bad time to arrive anywhere especially when you need to find yourself somewhere to stay and something to eat. Madurai is a big town, the second biggest in tamil nadu. It is the site of this massive temple called The Meenakshi Temple which has up to 10,000 people visiting it on a daily basis either on pilgrimage or as a tourist. As a result of such an influx of people there is plenty of accomodation there to cater for them, luckily enough the train station was right beside temple area so it wasn’t too hard to find a place. Needless to say I had to battle my way through the incessant wave of rickshaw drivers who were eager for business to get to the main thoroughfare. I checked into the first place that would have me, as an added bonus they have satelite tv so I could watch lots of new year soccer. The only negative about the room was that it only had a squat toilet, I have still to fully master that nuance of asian culture. It was 2 days shy of new years so I decided to stay there for 4 days just to get over the highest part of the high season.
I visited the temple the following morning. The first thing that hits you about the building is the sheer size of it. There are 4 sides to the complex each with a massive tower measuring over 50 metres each, each of these towers were pointed either north east south or west. Like all temples in india its necessary to leave yer sandles at the door, its meant to be a free service but if you don’t tip these people they will call on all of fury of shiva to fall on yer head. I arrived there while the temple inside was closed for lunch so there were hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims sitting around in the shade eating their lunch which consisted of a big serving of rice served on a banana leaf with what we call at home curry but what they call simply gravy. They might have one or two portions of vegetables to mix in aswell. I spent about an hour walking around trying to take in the temple. They really have a bizaare colour scheme going on, everything was in technicolor. To be honest I thought it looked a little childish and it was completely over the top. There is another temple inside the main complex called the temple of a thousand pillars. It was pretty cool and defo worth the 30 rupees or so that it cost to get in.
I think the next day in madurai will be the one that stands out the most. 2 nights is probably the optimum amount of time to spend in the city as there isn’t a whole lot to see apart from the temple complex, so as you can imagine spending 4 days there left me idle for quite a while some days. After checking my email I walked past this barber shop effort where there was a young guy at the door asked me if I wanted to get a haircut – remembering the jibe that I got from the guy on the bus to Cochin I decided it was time to take the plunge, that and I needed to kill some time before the soccer started later on that night. So in I went. The barbers name was Vil, 19 year old from a village a half an hour north of madurai. He got paid 100 rupees (less than 2 euro) a day (though I am well aware this could well have been a sob story to extort a decent tip out of me). I asked for a short haircut all over. Of course he nodded and proceeded to cut just the back of my head. Asked him again to cut the top the same length as the back, took ages to get the message across – you really need to be patient. I took the chance to get a proper shave, cut throat style aswell. When he was finished that the real fun started. He asked me if I wanted a head massage – I replied ‘No, Its okay’. Now I think I have mentioned before that the word no just doesn’t work here, so he just picked up ‘Okay’, so before I knew it this young lad was rubbing coconut oil into my head before giving it a proper bashing. He beat me around the place, its hard not to laugh when someone half your size is giving you a hiding. After the head he moved to the shoulders, then the upper arms, on down to my forearms and then he massaged my fingers individually. Now to be honest I was really enjoying it at this stage, no point in fighting it I figured.
He then produces a box from a cupboard which had 6 tubs of multi fruit flavoured cream. He asks me if I wanted it, again I make the dumb mistake ‘No, its okay’ – off with the lid of the first one and onto the face with some blackberry concoction – I was getting a bloody facial…
They even had a facial sauna thing which he ducked my head into every couple of minutes for what seemed like an eternity, my neck muscles were wrecked from resisting him pushing my head fully into what was nothing more than a bloody kettle without a lid. 4 more creams followed before he hit me with the pineapple flavour. as soon as this was applied I could feel it getting kinda stiff on my face. He put me leaning back staring at the ceiling while he buggered off to get his lunch – for 40 minutes I sat there wondering when the hell he was going to come back. I managed to get a glimpse of myself with the crap on my face, I looked like an oompa loompa that had just seen a ghost, my knee jerk reaction was to laugh but the cream had completely set so I couldn’t move my facial muscles at all. He did come back eventually and removed me from my prison. I walked into that place at 4 in the afternoon, it was not gone 6.45. It cost about 8 euros for the whole shabang. Twas an experience if nothing else 🙂 Not sure I would go for a facial again though, think its major surgery more than anything else that would be required to make this mug pretty 🙁
New years was pretty uneventful for me, it doesn’t really mean anything when you are not with family or friends. There were feck all tourists around madurai aswell so I rang the new year in on the hotel balcony watching fireworks across the temple complex amidst the muffled localised versions of auld langs syne. I shared the moment with one of the hotel porters, he didn’t seem to bothered either. Twasn’t long before I made my way to bed.
I left madurai on the 2nd of january. 2 days would’ve done it but I guess given the time of year it did the job nicely. Next journey was a 4 hour bus trip to Trichey to take in some of the sites my indian friend from the train implored me to visit…
Phil
Phil Gill