Aparna’s Blog

Rummaging through my bag, in which, I should tell you, are lots of papers, I started going through what I had written on those. Songs lists of concerts, notes taken down during lec-dems, lyrics of songs, thoughts which I wanted to later become blog posts and even full posts which I never got around to typing on the computer and publishing. There are a whole lot of writings which didn’t become posts in this blog at the time it should have! Anyway, here is a very belated post on a photography exhibition with inputs from what I had written on one of those papers right after coming back from the exhibition.

A few months back, or to be precise, from 23rd March to 4th April, there was a photography exhibition titled ‘Vijayanagara – Splendour in Ruins’ at Lalit Kala Akademi organized by Alkazi Foundation in association with Prakriti Foundation. It was an exhibition of rare photos of Hampi taken in 1855-1856 by Alexander Greenlaw, an army officer.
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This is my 500th post! A big thanks to each and everyone of you for making this happen!

A couple of weekends back, I had been to Mayavaram with my family and, as usual, we visited lots of temples. On Sunday, we went to Kudumiyanmalai and on Monday, we went to a whole lot of temples in and around Kumbakonam – Kumbheshwarar, Darasuram, Patteswaram, Baanapureeswarar, Thiruvisainallur SivayOginAtar temple, Thirunthudevankudi Karkateswarar temple, Thirubhuvanam, Thiruloki Sivan and perumAL temples. Almost all these temples are architectural marvels and, needless to say, we were just bowled over by the stunning architectural beauty!
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4 days. 10 temples with no two temples being close to each other.1600+ km travel by car - Exhausting, tiring yet a very memorable trip!

Apart from a few temples that we had on our must-visit list, visit as many temples as possible without rushing even in a single place was the only plan that we had for this trip. And we did succeed in doing that. We left the entire trip planning to the driver since he knew all the routes.
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A talk by Dr. Chithra Madhavan on 17th January at Tattvaloka

Part 1 here
Part 2 here

vaikuNTa perumAL temple

This temple, currently being maintained by ASI, was built by Nandivarman 2nd, who was a vishNu Bhakta. It is one of the 108 divvya dEsams. Tirumangai Azhwar, who was a contemporary of Nandivarman 2nd, has sung on the deity here. The original name of this temple is paramEshwara vishNu graham, where Parameshwara happens to be Nandivarman’s name.
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A talk by Dr. Chithra Madhavan on 17th January at Tattvaloka

Part 1 here

Till whatever I have written in the previous post, no photos were shown during the talk. But once Chithra started speaking about the temples in Kanchipuram, she showed lots of photos of each temple and for a major part, spoke about whatever was shown. kailAsanAthar temple was the first temple that was covered. Luckily, I have some photos of kailAsanAthar temple which, as you might know, I had taken when I had been there quite sometime back.
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Ever since I went for Dr. Chithra Madhavan’s talk on ‘Some lesser known temples of Madras’ last year, I had been eagerly waiting to go for another talk of hers. And it wasn’t until about a month back that it finally happened. ‘Kanchipuram – Art, History & Architecture’ was the topic for this talk that happened on 17th January at Tattvaloka. I just loved this talk as much as the previous one.

I managed to note down most of the things (I don’t remember taking notes like this even during my school/college days. ) and here is all that was covered in the talk: (As usual, please don’t forget to let me know if there are any mistakes in what I have written. Thanks in advance!)
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I absolutely loved this talk by Chitra Madhavan. This was conducted as part of the Madras Week celebrations. Being someone who has visited lots of temples in Madras and who loves visiting temples and admiring the sculptures and architectures there, I had decided to attend this talk the day I saw the events lined up for celebrating Madras Week.

For this interesting talk that lasted for about an hour, Chitra had chosen some 20 temples in Chennai. Along with ‘some lesser known temples of Madras’, ‘some lesser known details about some famous temples’ were also a part of this lecture. With relevant photos being shown in the power point presentation, she spoke about the different architectural styles that these temples have, the era to which they belonged to, the inscriptions at these temples and some of the temple sculptures, among other things.
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