This is about the place I call my home town. Like about 85% of India s youth, I hail from a little town too.. a small place called srirangam, a suburb in the city of trichy….before starting off.. I wonder what it is going to be in this post that is different from all that has been written by so many people about their home towns.. should I write at all? I write this for two reasons, one- if there is anything on earth that I know best and if asked to talk about(apart from eating and myself), I can talk on and on for as long as I want to, it would be this.. second, like all other accounts on home towns there is this authentic flavor of rangam that is unique to it..something I both hate and love equally.. a place that is part of my identity.. and thus inseparable from me.. most people even if they know this place would be for the temple or probably because their grandparents or some distant relative staying here.. and tamil literature buffs would know it as the home town of the great writer sujatha… for me it’s none of these.. This is the place where I spent the first fourteen years of my life.. I still remember the day I left this place (we were actually shifting base to Chennai) in spite of knowing I would come at least four times a year as my grandparents are here.. I cried like one might have when moving to amritsar, leaving behind Lahore during partition.. Back then, this was the only place I knew and thought was the best on earth.. I loved everything about it.. friends, playing paandi(hopping), cards,the pigs and piglets bathing in the sun near the main sewers , cycling to kollidam( a distributary of kaveri) with friends on summer noons, paternal and maternal grandparents, the evening market, all the festivals, school, music classes , being asked to sing every time someone visited my house, the tall coconut trees I could see from my balcony as they swayed gently in the chill morning breeze, everything… for a long time I was convinced that there existed no better place than this and drank every word of praise as my father spoke about it. I remember the times when I tried being this obedient granddaughter of my austere weirdly orthodox grandmother, trying to show off in front of my other cousins that I had superior knowledge about rangam who visited this place only during holidays from the north talking mostly in hindi or English, who never seemed to hold it in all the awe I felt it should duly get. ( a pompous know-it-all show off yeah)
Srirangam is on an artificial island, the kaveri on one side and kollidam on the other . it has been famous for the ranganathar temple, which is one of the largest temples with the tallest gopuram(equivalent to the dome) in Asia. The sanctum sanctorum right at the center has ranganathar in anantha sayanam which means he has stretched out like one would on their bed when watching t v. It’s supposed to be really famous down south and is usually thronged by tourists and devotees (that’s what they call themselves) from all over the world (oh yeah, of late there are people coming from places like America and Europe). For me none of these mean anything. What I do love is the less known visage, something that is still pristine and untouched by the hazy blur, that is the 21 st century world outside, something that I found out much later as I commuted from here to college in the first two years of engineering and now whenever I come in holidays..the sleepy town as it wakes up to every new morning, a cool zephyr laden with the fragrance of mullai(jasmine) and pavazha malli(a kind of mogra), making the leaves of the coconuts and neem rustle and brush against my face as I amble on, in the lane immediately around the temple, parrots chirruping as the gopurams bathe in the golden glow of the setting moon, giving them a sheen mild, serene and enchanting, the jingling bells of the milk man in his cycle as women wash the front yard and make kolams..after a while as the town is up, there goes a small procession from the kaveri to the temple with two elephants with the silver kodam (pitcher) and men chanting Vedas taking the holy water for the deity..
The tamil month of margazhi is my favourite time of the year when srirangam is at its glorious best. Margazhi that coincides with phalgun, from mid December to mid January is known as the music season particularly for thiruppavai a collection of poems written in praise of Krishna by andal ( tamil version of meera), the sole female among the twelve alwars (preachers of vaishnavism). Thiruppavai echoes like the mellifluous sounds from a brook in the lonely moors in the mornings and evenings here.
I remember how as a kid I would wake up early, wrapped in scarves make colour kolams and then if possible take a quick shower and then go to the andal temple behind my house to get steaming hot pongal(khichdi) cooked in fresh ghee spiced with pepper and cumin seeds. In the evenings I would go with friends to sit and chat in the manal veli( court yard of the temple) munching roasted peanuts and cotton candies.
One evening, I decided to go on a long walk after buying vegetables in the market. Away from the colourful crowded main bazaar, at one corner of chitra veedi a bharatnatyam concert was on. The place was crowded with women clad in nine yards and men as they watched rapturously some girls dance for ‘theeradha vilayattu pillai’. I walked past my favourite house, small thatched, a patti (old woman) sitting on the pyol, the front yard decorated by a beautiful kolam and a huge tree with little white flowers hanging like dew drops, the sweet scent of which wafted through my nostrils reminding me of r.k. narayan’s books..the patti glared at a boy as he sped past in his two wheeler.. there was the jasmine entwined with the lilies in one front of one of the houses.. I gazed at the kolams which were probably made in 5-10 minutes..yet so intricate, symmetric and elaborate..it all looked like part of a perfectly painted scenery.
In the houses in this temple town there is internet and every other facility. The women gossip all day. People are extremely orthodox and conservative and look at anything other than salwar kurta or sari on a girl with a stare that can mean anything from mild amusement to ‘this is blasphemous’. Middle aged and the old starved souls seem more interested than the young men in trying to brush against women, who instead are timid and satisfied passing stupid unpleasant remarks. If a girl wears jean and has short cropped hair she is certainly of a bad sort and would show no interest in god. If someone rants off in rapid English (even if it’s a garbled version of the language) he/ she is trying to be too modern and it is simply atrocious to be seen hanging out with someone of the other gender (the word sex is tabooed). The main roads are usually crowded with tourists and impatient honking vehicles. With more of these the place is getting increasingly polluted and noisy.
But what sets it apart and makes it so beautiful is the less noticed or often unnoticed quaintness, something that gives you the feeling of having gone back in time to a period that you never knew existed. Every little town in India I feel has its unique authentic flavor, probably what Max Mueller saw when he wrote about India. It is this unscathed, pure inexplicable thing and my childhood memories that make me love it. There was a time when I had a problem identifying myself as a srirangamite. Before that, I thought this was the best place on earth. But now it’s neither!!
