THIRUKADAL MALLAI (A) MAHABALIPURAM

It was the first of May. A holiday. We (Srikanth , Vaasu and myself) had planned to go to Mahabalipuram on this day. My intentions, while proposing this plan was to go to the two main temples – Sthalasayana Perumal temple and the Thiruvidanthai temple. I didn’t have in my mind the sculptures of the place which are more prominent. But the other two did. The two said even before starting that we would not be able to go to Thiruvidanthai. We planned for a 2 pm start (from Mylapore) but a heavy lunch made us delay the start by 30 minutes in which time we had a small session of 904. (For those who do not know, it’s a Trump game played with cards.)

At 2.30 pm we were in the streets of Mylapore walking under the scorching sun. Few minutes later we boarded a bus to Thiruvanmiyur. On the way, we noticed a Mamallapuram bus (No 588) from Adayar and with the help from our bus driver, boarded the other bus. It was 4.20 pm when we reached Mahabalipuram. We started off with the sculptures. The first one was that of Lord Krishna hoisting the Govardhana giri followed by Arjuna’s penance, the Ganesha Ratha, the Trimurthi ratha, the Rajagopuram (only for the name though!), the Mahishasura mardhini – all beautiful works of art! There was a light-house (which also houses a lot of bees!) but at a fair distance from the sea. When we were done with these, we proceeded towards the Pandava rathas. Unfortunately, the clock had struck 6 by then and visitors are not allowed after 6. We had to be content seeing the rathas from outside.

From there, we had a walk towards the beach and after spending some time, walked towards the temple. We felt we should have something to eat and so went to a nearby hotel – hotel Mamalla. I have never tasted sucha bad Dosa anywhere else. The guys had some coffee and we went into the temple at about 7.

The temple was a very small one. This is one of the 108 Divya Desams of Lord Vishnu.It houses the Sthalasayana Perumal – the name because the lord who usually sleeps on the ‘Adisesha’ sleeps on the floor here and his consort Nilamangai thaayar. He does not have his customary weapons. His feet rest on a Lotus that is said to have 1000 petals. The other sannithis include one for shri Andal, shri Lakshmi Narasimhar and shri Boothathalwar. In fact, the place is said to be the birth place of Boothathalwar. We were quite happy to get some Pongal offered as Prasadam. We missed to see the Utsavar. The brahmorsavam had started and the deity was taken out for a procession.

The place was heavily crowded, the day being a holiday and the buses were running full. So we took an auto to the by-pass with a hope that we would get some Chennai bound buses that could reach us soon. But we had to wait till 8.15 pm to board one such bus and had to stand all the way till Thiruvanmiyur. As expected we reached well before 9.15 pm.On the whole, it was a good visit worth remembering.