Madurai - Part 2

Part 1 || Part 3

The bus journey which brought me home gave me many new surprises. Though it is written as pengal in left side of the bus, everyone sit as they please in the bus and nobody follows it. Though I had a big luggage with me, the conductor never asked me to take a separate ticket for the same. In-fact he even said me once “bag ungaltha? Oru kannu irukkattum athu mela” and I remembered Vadivelu’s ‘ushaarayya ushaaru’ joke but this time I didn’t get to laugh but felt gratitude towards the conductor.

The Sunday went in dreams (happily sleeping) and the next day was my first day to Madurai intern office in ‘Iyer Bungalow’. It is not a place in Madurai it was somewhere else – at-least that was what I felt considering the journey time.  And that was the day I got to know many village names which I had never heard in my life before.

The day 1 visit was dedicated to ‘Karupatti’. Yes it is a village’s name with a beautiful history. They said during Pandya king’s rule all the elephants were tied up in one location. The elephants are called as ‘kari’ and their location/shed is called as ‘patti’ and thus the name.

We were to go to ‘Solavanthan’ and from there another bus to Karupatti. Luckily or unluckily (I would definitely call it as Luck from my POV) the bus was stopped outside Solavanthan and we were asked to walk inside the town to the bus stand to get another bus. When enquired we came to know that some ‘thiruvila’ is happening in that town. When we were walking inside, we saw a few boys on a tricycle with a water tank in it cleaning the road and every human being; vehicle was avoiding the cleaned/watered area. Then all of a sudden many people in yellow dresses with smaller sized pots ‘Chatti’ or pots filled with milk in their hand started walking on the road. Some had fire in it, and some looked empty with neem leaves. 

At last we crossed that place identified the bus stand got the bus and reached Karupatti. Everyone was telling go there, go here but nobody responded and I felt like being laughed at I asked one woman for details and she said she was not educated so she couldn’t answer. That was the 3^rd rejection in the initial 10 minutes. I was so upset and I couldn’t see any other shops nearby. That woman saw the look of my face and said me she is helpless. And suddenly I don’t know what she thought but she ordered her customers to give me details. And those customers in turn took me to their friends and those friends to their families. And within an hour or two the whole village was familiar to me. Then I felt people are very friendly and helpful, much more than the people in villages near Chennai. And the reason is these people are completely illiterate in contrast to those villages near Chennai. And these people have never been cheated, they are used to being taken care of and that is exactly the reason why they don’t feel afraid to get close with a new comer very soon. 

It is true that only 3-4 streets make this village but I did get lost myself once in this village. I was taken to a retired teacher’s house. I had to go inside a house (that is how it looked) and that house had a cross path in between where three paths met. I had to take a left there to enter another house (or a room or a road- you can never say what exactly that is) and another right in the end. There were many who were taking bath/cooking/ burning appalams / watching TV/ listening to songs/ playing indoor games on the either side of this path. And once I was to return back, everything looked similar, I was so confused that a little kid (hardly 5 years old) helped me with the way out.

It was time to say good bye at last and when we came to the bus stop (the same place where we got down) we heard someone talking about some other village. A little confused we asked where that village is and they said the road (where the bus stop is) is called ‘Balakrishnapuram’ and the side road (with 3-4 streets where we went) is called ‘Karupatti’ and both are different villages.  With this ‘Wow’ information it was a sayonara to the mighty elephant’s shed.