Theppakulam

Theppakulam  (தெப்பக்குளம்) - literally meaning ‘raft in the pond’ - is kind of a misnomer for the place. For I know that the place gets water only for a few days in February for the Theppam festival- in which the goddess Meenakshi floats in a raft along with her consort.

I grew up in an area called Pankajam colony just off the Theppakulam and so the place holds a lot of memories for me. Of course, though the second largest city in Tamil Nadu (debatable as I think both Trichy and Coimbatore are larger), by the standards of metro cities, you can literally live anywhere in the city and feel close to any landmarks.

Madurai still has a rural heart which I believe is something that cannot be taken away. I still remember farmers in bullock carts coming to sell paddy everyday in the middle of the city during school days - little has changed since then. The entire manufacturing and services revolution which transformed Coimbatore and Trichy , bypassed Madurai entirely. That’s for another day.

Theppakulam

It’s been a long time since I’ve walked around the place and so thought why not write about the place and reminisce a little?

Theppakulam was dug in the 17th century by the Nayak rulers and when we grew up, suppose to be point where Madurai proper ended. The last stop of the ubiquitous no.4 town bus service for so long , we use to look at that lonely easterly road towards Viraganur with dread.

It is in these lonely roads around here I learnt to ride a bicycle. Being the lazy guy I was (and still is), my mom used to wake me up around 5-6am and force me to do 2-3 rounds cycling around here. Measuring about a kilometre in length each side, the rides used to be so tiring and boring of course.

So she forced my cousins to take me with them for their weekend cricket matches in Theppakulam and they used to be bewildered by my skills in ball handling that there use to be heated arguments around whose team I should be in. However it is in one of those matches in this barren pond that I took a catch at point which still remains my peak athletic achievement.

That Madurai has changed now. While the Meenakshi temple has become such a touristy place that I think the locals pretty much stopped going to the temple except on festival days, Theppakulam still remains a local haunt but the quietness of the place is now replaced with a buzzing entertainment sense with road side shops and hundreds of people hanging around and inside the tank.

Muktheeswarar Temple

I took a walk around the tank just like the old days. The air was cool and the place was lively and so starts with the very quiet Muktheeswarar temple in the west side of the tank. This used to be a quiet temple and thankfully remains so even now.

The boats

Found a few boats which used to ply the pond in the school nearby. In my entire life, I have seen boats in the pond only once and so not sure what they were doing here.

The road into the city

As one walks towards the northern side of the tank, the road that goes towards the city diverges. For some reason unknown to me, a lot of marriage halls are around in this area and so the place looks lively with music and girls decked up during the marriage season.

Noticed a factory outlet shop of VS Chellam - this is a local soap brand which sells detergents and others manufactured in Madurai. I remember their hand-made soap factory we visited as part of a school tour and the smell of soap that was hanging in the air all around.

The Paper Roast at Sabarees

Had a paper roast at Sabaree's which is also here - a vegetarian restaurant which serves some yummy stuff. And if you are lucky, you can see some young nuns from the Nirmala convent nearby and on school days, watching the nuns and the girls from the school used to be a favorite pastime for us - we lived in a street just opposite to the convent and so most of my school mates use to hang around our gates till the school empties everyday.

Thiagarajar College

Moving towards the Theppakulam Mariyamman temple, you can see the college which produced so many Dravidian stalwarts - old and prestigious, the Thiagarajar college has so much of history buried in its grounds.

Mariamman Temple

Next off is the Mariamman temple. Madurai is a city where there is a festival at one of its temples on any given day. So I watched as a long line of girls - young and old - carrying mulaipaari , the traditional germination and sprouting of seeds done during the Tamil month of Aadi - singing some songs and a few older men directing them to the temple.

Mulaipari

Kamaraj Hall and the road to the second bridge

Moving towards the eastern side of the tank, the corner has the Kamaraj hall and the second bridge across Vaigai connecting this part to the Anna Nagar area on the 'other' bank of Vaigai. Madurai people always think of the 'other' bank of Madurai as some external entity and considered only 'this' bank which has the Meenakshi temple as Madurai proper and the 'other' bank used to be some outside entity.

Maruthu brothers

The eastern side of the tank has the large statue of the Maruthu brothers - now floodlighted and prominent with the road to Viraganoor going beyond it. The Theppakulam police station lies a little further.

The Eastern side of the tank has the 'notorious' Model school - where most of my periappas and chittappas (uncles) learnt to fail exams and in the process were part of some of the legendary stories in the family. - with the most famous one being, one periappa and a few chittappas (including cousins), having managed to write the 10th standard exam in the same year, goes to the school to check the results. Having waited all morning for the kids to return from school, my grandma and grandpa goes into panic thinking they should've run away or worse, after seeing the results and initiate a frantic search across neighbors and friends houses. All the kids return by evening. All of them failed the exams and decided to go watch 'Iruvar Ullam' in Chintamani theater to tide over the grief and ended up on the wrong side of the broom that day at home.

Fireworks across the sky

Having completed the round, there was nothing for me but to sit on a side of the tank and watch the fireworks happening in one of the marriage halls and feeling a sense of lightness not experienced anywhere in the world.

There is absolutely no place like Madurai..

Stepping out of the car..

One of the things I've been enjoying as the kids grow up is to discuss issues with them. It is a lot of fun to make them think through to figure out what is right and what is wrong and decide on which side of the political spectrum they want to be in.

It was gentrification of cities we talked about last week. We were driving through the city and were talking about the cost of rent versus the property prices in the city. The discussion started as we drove along the rubble of the encroached houses and shops around the MRTS station in Velachery. Most of the people who rented/built the structures were lower wage earners and I was explaining how the fish stalls there were initially moved from Vijaya nagar and are again being now moved out of Velachery itself.

I started explaining how the high rent and property prices in the area are being kept at their level to slowly push the lesser fortunate to move outside the city and how it impacts their livelihood by increasing transportation costs. Initially they were skeptical as to how to avoid such scenarios. I explained a little of the rent-control laws in NYC and other cities which help keep all strata society to be able to afford housing in the city. And how having no such protection here is favoring the greediness of the people and leaving the lower wagers and the poor to be excluded. We argued and the common misconceptions of equating cleanliness with hiding the poor was cited and we talked about how hiding the poor is not a solution but rather  generating more wealth across the society is a possible solution.

The discussion ended as we reached home. I am sure they will form their own opinions and arguments etc on the issues and the most important thing for me is to make sure that they realize that these are issues that affect people around them and if not empathetic, it is important at least to be sympathetic to that.

While Vanathy reads a lot of fiction, Sibi reads the newspaper everyday - not just the sports section but every page of it. And I think that has helped him to form his opinions on everything - I don't necessarily discuss everything with him, but when we come across some issue, he always expresses what he thinks and why. I get that the opinions that I had when I was 17 were drastically different from what I've today and so it is interesting to see the way his thought process evolves.

Vanathy needs a constant reminder to read 'up' on books and not get bogged down by the YA alone. So I keep recommending her books to read - sometimes she does and mostly she just parks it for 'future' reading. One book which she found interesting and I thought added a lot of value is this one.

Not necessarily a political book but is a powerful reminder for her on what can be achieved if you focus on what you want to do and a lot of examples of that.

Me and Vanathy were watching the 'Family Reunion' in Netflix yesterday and it was the episode where the police officers hold the black kids as suspicious 'men' and I was telling her how the racial equations are skewed in US and it is not always the rose-tinted world that she imagines it to be. When the pictures of kids shot by the officers started rolling off, I asked her to look up on Malcolm X and read a bit about the civil rights movement. Talked a little about the challenges of being black or brown in US and some of the racial tensions that still exist.

And the most important thing that I am still teaching them is to be able to look at issues for what they are rather than with a prejudiced view of an ignoramus. The whatsapp story clubs and the faux nationalistic ideologies have skewed the views so much that the comprehension of issues or a discussion on that has become virtually impossible with people equating whatabouttery as discussion. I want them to understand that and identify when that happens.

To me, it is important that they start learning about some of these real issues in the real world and be able to form an opinion and do their part. I grew up in a poor household and so was naturally inclined to try to understand the inequalities around me - helping me to form my political opinions. It is not the same for them. Seeing the world through a car window makes one insulated from the reality outside and only results in seeing the lesser fortunate as expendable without having any understanding of the issues.

If my kids somehow manage to step out of that car and be able to sympathize with causes and people, I may be able to call myself a good parent.