God's Own Country's Trip - part 2

This is where we came in.

(Itinerary: Guruvayoor---->Cochin, 21st May 2006)

We were scheduled to visit the temple at Guruvayoor and then proceed to the elephant sanctuary nearby, before heading to Kutty's home at Cochin.

Certain Hindu temples in South India have this particular rule that men are supposed to enter the temple bare-chested, and should wear a "mundu" to cover their lower halves. The temple at Guruvayoor was one such.

My parents had visited the temple a few years ago, and hence I was sufficiently forewarned about the necessity of a mundu, and had stuffed my bag with one. Neville too, had chosen to bring one of his own.

Shaavi and Kutty had decided to buy mundus near the temple, and consequently so did Gaurav. For the four South Indians in the group, it was not too much trouble to actually wear one and walk around and be comfortable in, but for a guy who was born and brought up in Delhi, wearing a mundu in the sweltering heat of Guruvayoor was quite a task.

Our man, Gaurav was quite up for the challenge, as he waited with the three of us in the queue to visit the temple. The queue was extremely long, to say the least, and we were told that it would take three hours more before we actually got through into the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

Neville decided to give the temple visit a miss, in favour of his friend's marriage ceremony, given the fact that he could come around here some other time. This left the four of us standing in the extremely long queue. It was extremely hot, to say the least, and the line was so long, that it curved and snaked and backtracked onto itself many times over, before actually heading towards the temple.

I ended up having a feeling that I was slowly progressing up the board in a snakes and ladders game, sequentially without the ladders, and if you've been in such queues, you'd know exactly what I mean.

One of the guys had a brainwave and decided to buy the newspaper, and the four of us devotees stood on, piously, digesting the day's events after that, until we had read everything possible that interested us, including some article on TV Evangelists being so well-to-do, written in a manner such that it would expose the farcical nature of their activities.

The swarm of people gathered there only kept on increasing as time progressed, and it made me wonder about quite a few things. One was that I had made up my mind about my favourite temple being the one in my society compound, back home in Mysore, where I could enter the temple immediately without having to wait in a long queue, and at the same time, stay there and pray within the temple to my heart's content for as long as possible.

The other was of how people were willing to endure such a long wait in the extreme heat, just to catch a glimpse of the idol within the temple. Their extreme levels of devotion touched me. It also made me feel upto the task of waiting in line myself, without having realised that I had spent so much time in line.

Two hours after we had first stood in line, we were able to exit the temple, after praying, and having viewed the Lord's idol within the sanctum sanctorum for an extremely short while as some temple staff proceeded to push us forward so that everyone in queue could get a glance. The temple was beautiful, and despite the whole rush of people around, I felt at peace while praying. That was all that was necessary.

Having visited the temple, we proceeded to visit the elephant sanctuary, which houses close to sixty elephants that are trained for use during important festivals at the temple. We saw obese elephants (obviously), elephants of all sizes, a whole load of elephant droppings and some skinny elephants too! If you doubt that there are skinny elephants, a trip to the elephant sanctuary is a well deserved one for you.

The elephants looked quite cute and playful, mainly because none of them displayed a visible tendancy to want to snap their not-so-strong looking chains and charge towards some irritating humans who were hell bent on photographing them despite there being a ban on photography or videography of any sort, which is why Gaurav was unable to use his handycam to scare any of the pachyderms.

To head to Cochin/Ernakulam, Kutty's place, we had to board the passenger train at Guruvayoor that was scheduled for departure at 1:30 PM. After reaching the station at 1:00 PM and purchasing tickets for the five of us and for four other friends of Neville's, we stood on the platform, getting broiled, while spreading the good word to Neville's former college-mates about his new sticky nickname.

The train was fully crowded. In order to get comfortable seats on the train, people had arrived at the station an hour in advance, and everyone was sitting within, occupying every small bit of possible seating space, totally oblivious to the heat at 1:15 PM in the fucking afternoon. A story of human endurance, no doubt, for someone who's not so much at home in non-temperate climates, and has been accustomed to temperature controlled A/C environments at the office and while illegally having entered train A/C compartments.

Due to the unbearable heat, we were absolutely disinclined to go find some standing room within the train, though we had to do so eventually, to be able to get to Cochin.

Gaurav and I walked the length of the train, and saw that only the luggage compartment was free, albeit extremely dirty. The abundance of space within seemed attractive enough for us to be oblivious of the dirt, though we did not, initially, have enough guts to be able to go sit inside directly.

Gaurav, armed with his six words in Malayalam, took matters in his own hands, and was able to convince the station master of our predicament, and let him allow us into the luggage compartment.

So we trooped in, the nine of us, with ten tickets for the train, into the confines of the place, and made ourselves as comfortable as possible. Soon another bunch of people trooped in, and our man, Gaurav, in pigdin Mal, went about trying to convince them how we were given special permission, and that he was distantly related to our railway minister.

The family that had entered were the ones who cleaned the train and worked on it regularly, and took no bullshit from us. As the train eventually started moving after what seemed like eternity, we began a long wait to reach Cochin.

A few good pictures were taken, and we were generally taking in the scenery that passed by us within the compartment.

At every station where the train stopped, somebody or the other, as enterprising as we were, wanting to get into the compartment, was summarily stopped by Gaurav and his six Malayalam words. Each of the unsuspecting people wanting to invade our territory was questioned about random things before it was decided that he was unworthy of admission.

As spectators, watching all of this unfold, we could all but stifle our laughter until each poor guy passed by, after being refused admission. For all the fun we poked at Gaurav and laughed at his antics, we must thank him for having actually ensured that we were comfortably seated all through the journey, with minimal discomfort. Way to go, biyatch.

As the train slowly chugged into the Cochin (South) station, we all heaved a collective sigh of relief at the fact that our journey ended, and the backwater cruises awaited our royal presence.

Here is a parting shot - a view of the outside, through our luggage compartment.

to be continued.....