Temples, Vadais & Blaring Speakers 


My MADurai- 


Temples, Vadais' and blaring speakers !!!

“enna ooruda ithu ! che!”


 A typical Madurai morning morns to blaring speakers..for some godly festival or to an inauguration of some tea-kadai!!! Nothing new, this happens almost everyday. -Something is celebrated everyday, and everyday the speakers blare somewhere in the neighbourhood. That’s the only way this city knows to celebrate. Sound. Noise. 
“enna ooruda ithu ! che!” 

Correction - Madurai is no city, just a bursting, bumbling, over populated village. And this place has got temples in every direction you see, and in all sizes. This place is not just ‘a Temple city’ as it is traditionally known, but truly a city of Temples. And the Gods revel in blaring speakers. 
 Today it is goddess Saraswathy, tomorrow it may be the street-corner Mari-amman, and the day after that it might be one ‘muni-samy’. I think that all the Gods that might have been conceived in the entire universe in its entire history are here. And they all have been given their due temples and their due festivals. And they all, equally and competingly, revel in blaring speakers.

Ah...and the tea-kadais!!!
 Every other shop is a tea-kadai, selling tea and vadai. Vadai of the ‘aamai’ kind. And everyday there is one new tea-shop sprouting up in some street in the neighbourhood, announcing itself through the blaring speakers. 
 Actually to think, this place seems to hold a lot of unique quintessence to itself. Other than the holding the record for most blaring piece of land in the whole world, I am told that my place, this Madurai, may hold the record for munching down more ‘aamai-vadais’ in one day than what the rest of the whole world may munch down in a whole year. 
One in every two of the perhaps 6 lakh male population, - out of about 15 lakhs total,- and another 3 lakh that float in to this mega-village, munch atleast one ‘aamai-vadai’ everyday. That’s about 6 lakhs of‘aamai-vadai’ munched down everyday. Amazing right? 

Well ofcourse there might be a bit of exaggeration in this, but I suppose you get the essence. These temples and tea-shops, with its blaring cone speakers along with the vadai munching village-zens make-up the very unique essence of this place. 

My Madurai.

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