Aparna’s Blog

Day 5:
The day began with seeing a very beautiful sunrise on the Ganges right from the balcony of the room!

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The deities, the huge flower garlands adorning them, the Nadaswaram, the band, the kolams on the Mada veedis, the devotees thronging the Mada veedis to get a darshan of Kapaleeswara, the traffic diversions, the pandals on the Mada veedis where the deities rest for a while, the koDa rATnams/merry-go-round, etc. - It’s that time of the year when Mylapore has an aura of festivity and divinity to it with the Panguni Festival on at Kapaleeswarar temple and today is the day of Adikaara Nandi. The deities are taken out in procession at around 6:00 in the morning. I went there at around 8:00 am and saw the deities in procession at South Mada Street.

Lord Vinayaka:

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Day 4:

It was a bright and sunny morning the next day which meant that, devoid of mist, we had an even clearer view of the surrounding hills. It was then that we realized that the view from Gun Hill was visible right from our room!

I could stand in the balcony and gaze at the snow-capped Himalayas to my heart’s content.

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I visited this temple in July 2011.

During random browsing, I came across this post on dharsanam.com about Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple at Semmenchery. I was surprised that I had never heard of such an ancient temple being right here on OMR despite coming to OMR everyday for the past few years, though the moment I read the name I remembered seeing the temple somewhere. So off I went in search of this temple.
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“Lesser Known Temples of Chennai – Some More” - A lecture by Dr. Chithra Madhavan on 23rd August, 2011 at Gallery Sri Parvati held as part of Madras Day celebrations.

It was a nostalgic-me who attended this lecture since it was during the Madras Day celebrations in 2008 that I first attended Dr. Chithra Madhavan’s lecture little knowing that after that lecture, my visits to old temples would never be the same anymore and that I would go on to attend many more lectures of hers in the coming years. The topic of that lecture was ‘Lesser Known Temples of Chennai’ and this year’s too was again ‘Lesser Known Temples of Chennai – Some More’.

As usual, this lecture too was filled with a wealth of information. The photos of almost all the sculptures, vimanams and gopurams that were mentioned about were shown.
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Yes my blog completes 4 years today. Happy Birthday, blog! And a very big thanks to you all for reading this blog for so long!

Blog

Of course, of late, the blog is not updated as frequently as it once used to be. And to think that it is only in the last few months that I have been having free time in excess and I didn’t utilize it even one bit to update my blog! I seem to have given up all attempts at resurrecting the blog. Let me at least do a quick roundup of all that I missed blogging about.

It is only my blog that I have neglected. I have never been as regular in reading others’ blogs as I have been during these months. I hardly have any unread items left on my Google reader.
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The sound of some music band out on the street wakes up all of us at home. We realize that it’s being played for the procession of some Amman. Seeing through the window, we wait to get a glimpse of the deity. It was taking quite a bit of time for the deity to reach our part of the street. We go out into the street and see the music band followed by a group of nadaswaram and tavil players. And then surrounded by a small group of devotees was the Amman embellished by jewels, huge, colourful garlands and lots of flowers - beauty and divinity personified. Seeing the festive atmosphere, you don’t realize that it’s 1:30 am in the night! Isn’t this what the month of Adi is all about? With Adi being synonymous with festivities in the ubiquitous Amman temples all over the city and with even some of the small temples in street corners having their own utsava vigraham (processional idol), you can often see some idol in procession.

P.S.: This happened yesterday night and for the first time in the last few weeks, I suddenly felt the need to pen this down and felt the words pouring out. Is my bloggers’ block finally gone?