An unfamiliar experience

Last week I went to my sister's Ghravarpavesam to Nagainalor. Its a village in Trichy district. This is the first time I had been to a village. I am glad I did not miss this trip. This is one of the best experience I have felt.

Both my father and mother are from small village Aghragharams. My father have told lot of stories about his native place and I always wanted to see how a aghragharam will look like.

This place, Nagainalor, is about 2 hrs drive from Trichy. When we reached the place I was surprised to know that the entire village is just about a street with 20 houses.


I also came to know that aghragharam starts with Perumal temple and ends with Shivan temple. This aghragharam, next to Shivan temple, had a huge lake. It was about 700 acers. I assumes those days people would take bath and madiya (this is a Tamil slang which mostly Bhramin's alone can understand) will come home.


It was so nice to see houses with not the normal brick roof. All the houses were built in traditional way with thinai in front of the house and mitan inside the house.




Every house had mud pot infront of the house which anybody can use to drink water. They keep refilling it. This water is so chill that we can just forget our refrigerators.

My favourite was the kayathu kattil. Men in the village use this bed for sleeping.














We went to this place during Rama Uschavam. This village had a small Ramar kovil. This festival is for about 15 days. People in this village and near by place will not cook these 15 days. The temple provides food for everybody who walks in. All 4 days we had food in this temple. And the food was very good and tasty.

Every day they start bajans around 5 and it continues till 2 in the night. They had put pandhal to reduce the heat. It was so cool inside this pandhal.

Some good times I had:
Thinai vambu
Pampu set bathing
Kayathu katil sitting
Sleeping in thinai at night
Watching kids playing cricket
Food at ramar temple
Walking barefoot in the street
Listening to ramar bajans














I wish to visit this place once again.

Click here for more pictures.

Height of vettiness...

Lost Beauty

By now reading the title and seeing the picture most would have guessed what am I going to write about.



As I was driving, listening to FM, they were discussing about suprem court judgment. Was shocked to now that there are about 30000 illegal hoarding in Chennai. At the same time was very glad to know that most of the hoarding were removed over night (thats too fast for our government).

As I entered the Panagal Park road, saw the first torn hoarding. The whole left side of the road was looking empty. The whole road had Saravana Stores hoardings... now has only iron bars. Same scene in Mount road too.

I felt the real impact in Mount road. The entire stretch looked empty. Mount road seemed to be missing something. Especially in the night when I was driving through Anna flyover, towards GN Chetty road, it was pitch dark. It was then I realised that so far it was the hoarding lights which was showing us the path. The so familiar road looked so different to me.


Those giant hoarding added beauty to the city. All around you. Many times I had felt bad cos I was not able to stare at them cos I drive my car. However I am sure people traveling in bus would have had good time pass when the bus gets struck in the traffic. Now all those are missing.

விளம்பர பலகை இல்லா சென்னை களை இழந்த சென்னை ஆகிவிட்டது.