Progeny on temple trails!!

Dreams can be obscure on one hand and enigmatic on the other. I had been plagued by a vague dream for some time now. It had but been profound enough to nudge me often. The dream had that, I visit a well known Ranganathar shrine and the diety, just falls face down!! Myriad prophecies and omens haunted me no end. I knew that a visit to 'Srirangam' , Trichy...a sacred abode with an erudite history will keep those delusions at bay.

A short travel plan with sis ( just the two of us ) started to take shape and then voila! we had six more cousins ( sans hubbies and children ) more than willing to join us. The thought of just breaking away from the grindstorm and to call it a piligrimage even, made us wait for the day to set off with bated breaths! The quaint temple town of Madurai also fitted in our itinerary. Trust me, it is hard to optimally cover all temples in any given district of TN. What with innumerable of them nestled at elusive places and all with some interesting facts.

So train tickets were booked and off we set, eight of us 28-40 somethings to Madurai..I could think of coining a term for this group- 'The Hemmige Progeny'..Incidentally, Hemmige is our ancestral village in Mandya and more of a community now.

Banters and guffaws ( much to the vexation of our co-travellers ) that started at the Bangalore platform went on unabatedly and ended also at the same place after our return from Trichi two days later with a loud five!

The magnanimity of Meenaxi temple , Madurai left us spellbound. For once we sang Devi kritis and verses without being goaded on to do so and all oblivious to onlookers. Madurai, to our surprise had more interesting temples .. another blog post of mine will dwell on and dedicate on them.

We had decided to visit the Srirangam temple in traditional attire and must have been a sight, eight of us treading the mammoth sacred temple 'prakaras' to the sanctum at daybreak! At 236 feet stood the tallest Gopuram of the world beckoning ardent pilgrims. Legend runs back to none other than Lord Brahma himself worshipping the idol and traverses along the time line to the Treta yuga whilst Lord Srirama reigned and handed over the diety to Vibheeshan.

My dream!..I started to palpitate as I stood in the queue. Suprabhata seva here is all the more special and we got to get a glimpse of that as well...He wakes up to the wonderful sight of a simply bedecked cow and her calf, a horse and an elephant trumpeting thrice! How wonderful it is to be aroused by pristine forms of life! My emotions ran amok as I took the first Darshan of Him and to reassure myself of that fallacy attached to my dream, all of us had not one but two Darshans! The lightness that I felt is beyond description.

65 acres of this imposing temple premises , Lord reclining on the Adisesha , His tantalising smile, alluring anklets that adorned the Divya padas ......we could'nt have asked for more!

Our fervour, fun and frivolty got the better of us. The trip ended allright, but in unision all of us swore that this had better be a beginning !