A Trip to Srirangam

Let me tell you two stories today.

Once upon a time there was a young girl who was full of love for lord ranganatha (her love was matched only by meeras love to krishna). She was supposed to be found under a tulasi plant and raised by a temple priest. One of her daily activities was to prepare garlands for the lord ranganatha. She wanted to make sure everything is so perfect for the lord that, she would wear the garland once to test and see everything is perfect before sending it to temple. One fine day her father, who is a devout priest found this and was shell shocked. He immediately reprimanded her and asked her send freshly prepared garlands. The next day when garlands were offered to the Lord, Lord found something was missing. Where is the scent of the girl, who would be his future wife, in the garland? Lord had to step in and take some action. He appeared in the fathers dream and requested him to bring garlands only after andal(the girl) wears it. What a beautiful and mesmerizing story. Is n't it..
Now let me tell the second story. The sultan of Delhi invaded a temple. As is the custom in Hindu temples, all the main idols have fortunes buried under. The sultans army looted the fortune and for some reason took idol safely to Delhi. That idol happens to be heart and soul of vaishnavas. They had to get it back. Some of them boldly ventured to Delhi and pleased the sultan with their acts and requested that the idol be sent back. Sultan in his good mood said, "its ok. take it back". What happened meanwhile? Sultan's daughter, the eye of his apple, fell in love with idol and she followed him all the way from Delhi to Srirangam though she was a muslim :-) Eventually she attained moksha merged in to the idol. The sultan got angry and suspected some foul play. He attacked Srirangam again. But, the priests this time pre-empted his move by moving the idol to around south India. Rest you can read in history books.

How can you not fall in love with all these stories and not be curious to see the idol yourself..hmm thats how the seed of visiting Srirangam got sowed in my head. Ever since I moved to Bangalore, I wanted to visit this place. After my elaborate plans got botched up couple of times, my desperation only grew further. The more I read about it, the more I fell in love with it. Srirangam is an island on the river Kaveri. Can there be a better incentive for water lover :-)

So this weekend suddenly my friend D (lets call him Danny) said "shall we go to Srirangam?". I immeidately signed up. Because of the last minute planning we had to take a bus (Ac 2x2 sleeper but back breaking nevertheless). We arrived in Srirangam at 4.30 AM and immediately took a bus to Kaveri. Due to the draught in Karnataka there was barely any water in Kaveri. boohoo..I was extremely disappointed. Early in the morning weather was pleasant and Danny insisted we walk to the temple. After a nice 2km walk, we arrived at the Rajagopuram. Our plan was to take a bath in Kaveri visit the two temples and leave back to Bangalore. So, we never did any research about where to stay and what to do. I was completely relying on Danny who knew the local language and visited the place couple of times. After some contemplation, I remembered about jeeyar swami math near temple and we went there to seek temporary accomodation (I would recommend this if you are looking for clean accommodation in modest price near temple).
We took a quick shower and left to temple. According to temple rituals, the visitors are not allowed from 7.30-9.00AM. We just made in time had a darshan at 7.30. It was beautiful. There were three small idols
and no artificial lighting was used in "garbha gruha".. After a minute or so, we were promptly asked to leave the inner shrine. Any time of the year, there are huge queues here. There is a 50/- and 250/ special darshan which can save the day.

After the darshan, we spent some time sitting in contemplation near the inner shrine. Danny took shots of golden inner gopuram and told me stories that historians somehow missed documenting about the temple :-) When you are with Danny, these stories are added benefits and believe me you would want to pay to listen to these. There is more to say about this but I will save it for some other time.

The Srirangam temple is a huuuuuge temple with 7 outer prakarams(walls). The length of outermost prakaram is close to 2km. So, you can image how big the temple is. After the morning darshan, we visited lof of smaller shrines in the temple. There is the tomb of Sri Ramanujacharya, who wrote(??) the doctrine of vishistadwaita. There is temple of goddess goda devi, mahalakshmi. there was also another small shrine where you can see idols of sri rangantha with 3 goddesses. It was too beautiful to describe.
Going around the temple is like visiting a living fort. It is that huge. After an hour or so, I got really tired with lack of proper sleep and all the walk. We went back to room to take a 10 minute break. That turned out to be a good 2 hr nap :-p. Now, Srirangam is also famous as a shaiva kshetra. There are 5 shrines of panchabhooteswara in TN/AP. Kanchi, Kalahasti, chidambaram, srirangam and tiruvannamalai. I visited all of them except chidambaram and srirangam. So we went to visit the shiva temple. This temple was equally grand in size and stature. We were really lucky to have a very close darshan thanks to some random stranger who let the two of us in after doors were closed for general public. We spent good 30 minutes in the inner shrine.

After that, we had a nice lunch at the math (Did n't meet Danny's quality bar as usual). By then, it was really hot and we decided to take another nap instead of venturing into town again. Next was a trip to 'taayumaanavar temple'. This is a ganesha temple located on a hill in the middle of the Trichy town. It was a bit of trek but was well worth the effort. You can get panoramic views of Srirangam island and Trichy town. We had some TN famous "Jigar thanda". its an icecream fload in almond flavored milk and is a delicacy from madurai it seems. Well worth it. You should definitely try it.

I was really tired by then and just wanted to go to room and simply crash till the night bus. But real blooper was yet to be unearthed. Somewhere in my mind, there was this lingering doubt. Every time they mention Srirangam, they see Lord ranganatha in a sleeping posture on sesha saayi. How come that idol was not in the temple. When I mentioned this to Danny..he flipped out. "What? what did you see in there? There is the huge idol in inner shrine". I was like..@#$%@$#?? It turns out for four months, from July ot October, Lord Ranganatha is hidden behind a curtain. Only face is shown. Because of crowd, darkness, lack of awareness..I did not bother to look besides the curtain. I just saw the three small bronze statues in foreground and thought that was it and came out. whoa..now I had to go and visit the temple again.

(There was a curtain in front of the black statue covering the statue from shoulder to feet).
I was cursing my stupidity as we were running out of time for the last darshan and I was worried I would leave the place with out actually seeing the real idol about whom I read all the stories. We rushed like crazy to the temple only to find serpentine queues. I was really disheartened. Suddenly some guy emerged out of nowhere. This guy is some temple worker who maintains queues..I ended up tipping him for some reason in the morning. This guy saw us..bypassed  all the queues and took us to right infront of 'garbha gruha'. Don't ask me how. I would like to believe in miracles and God's grace :-) Finally, I saw the real idol. It was really majestic. I am going there sometime after Diwali to see the full statue but loved every second I spent in that inner shrine. After that we came out, had dinner and bought Tamil traditional lungi :-) and stepped on to bus for return journey. Phew...that was a long story.

Thanks to my friend, had one of the memorable trips and I woud love to go there again sometime. May be not such an elaborate trip but to visit the ranganatha in his full ornate glory.