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This is the fourth part in my series on my visit to Tanjore in January 2012 – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I am writing about my visit to the historic Tanjore Big Temple – Brihadisvara Temple. This is a living temple with poojas being offered daily for last thousand years.
We went to the temple in the evening few hours before sunset and could get some lovely photos taken.
In the evening sunset light the 216 feet tall tower was so beautiful and breath-taking.
We went inside and had a good darshan at the main sanctum-Santorum (no photos allowed there). The below lingam is one of the many in the complex.
You will find many old scriptures in Tamil all around the temple complex
Finally by the time we came out it was night time and there was buzzing activity in the night bazaar setup opposite the temple complex.
You can see the entire set of photographs I took of Big Temple here (these were taken before my Photography training, so many will not make the cut for clean pro version)
This is sequel to my visit to Thanjavur Palace.
Inside the Tanjore palace apart from the main Art Musuem you can see few other places of interest. There is Saraswathi Mahal Library, Serfoji’s Memorial Hall Musuem, Mahratta Dharbar Hall & Royal Museum. Each of these are maintained by different parties – ASI / Tamil Nadu Government, The Descendants of Serfoji and so you need to buy over half-a-dozen tickets. Each of these tickets costs between Re.1 to Re.20, if they combine it and make it a single entry it will make it easy for tourists.
Saraswathi Mahal Library is one of the main attractions here. The Library contains books collected from the period of Nayaks in 1535 A.D. and enhanced during King Serfoji II during 1798 A.D. The books collection exceeds over 60,000 and many rare European language books are present here. I found it interesting to find on display pages from a book titled Chinese prisoner tortures – unbelievable and inhuman.
The next stop was the Royal Museum which houses some utensils, elephant bells, turbans (head gear) and weapons used in the olden days.
The next was Serfoji’s Memorial Hall Musuem. The path to the place is poorly maintained, vegetation’s grown all around threatening the survival of the palace.
Inside the museum there is not much of interest in display, other than old furniture’s, coins and daily use items.
There was a sign saying path to secret passage subway, we walked down few steps and found the place to be not lit at all with all kinds of sounds coming from beneath. Not wishing to go further and encounter bats or rats we retraced our path back.
The last stop was the Mahratta Dharbar Hall (assembly hall). I couldn’t help comparing with the Dharbar Hall I have seen in Mysore Palace or Jaipur palace – both being maintained in fine condition compared to this.
Overall the trip to Tanjore palace was interesting and useful to get a feel of history in this part of my India. You can see the full set of photographs I took from here.
This is follow-up to my earlier post – Part 1.
On the first day of our visit to Tanjore after morning breakfast we went to Thanjavur Palace. It was good we had over half-a-day to spend in the palace visit, for you to appreciate the artefacts and history you need to go around without rush. And for us taking photographs took quite a bit of time as well.
After you enter the main courtyard of the palace which is now an Art Musuem maintained by Archaeological society of India you are welcomed by hundreds of statues and sculptures which were unearthed by researches over the centuries in this part of Tamil Nadu. Most of them had names plates for you to understand but there was no guide or information to explain more about the palace and the displayed artefacts.
Just like in Chennai’s Egmore Museum I saw many fine bronze statues of Nataraja and other gods in display at the museum here.
There were many winding steps you can take to climb the tower to the top (about six levels I think)
And from the top you get wonderful view of the surroundings and city, you can see the Big Temple as well:
There were many boards warning not to damage or write on walls of the tower insides, but few seem to care about it. I felt pain seeing many scribbling’s all across the walls of what is a national historic treasure. It is believed that growth in Literacy and Economy will make a population and culture respect and protect its history but that seems to be not true in India. We seem to have a blatant disregard in preserving.
See the sorry state of maintenance of the walls and structures (see in the right of the picture below) in many places around the palace.
At the first level they have kept a display of skeleton of a 92 feet Whale that washed ashore near tranquebar in 1955. It is displayed in poor condition. Other than occupying an empty hall it doesn’t fit into the theme of the other displays and the place.
You can see all the photos I took from here and here is a blog post by Richard Clarke who has posted some fine photographs of Thanjavur Palace.
This January (2012) for a co-workers wedding I visited Thanjavur (Tanjore) along with my good friend E.Ravi. We travelled from Chennai to Thanjavur by Rock Fort Express night train leaving Chennai Egmore at 22:30 and reaching Thanjavur the next day morning around 6:30.
Since we had booked for this nearly 70 days back we could get berths in First AC, which was comfortable with wide berths and clean toilets – there were indicators in the coupe for occupancy of toilets (seen below).
The coupe even had a sign listing of items and services provided in First AC Coaches (seen below).
It is always fun to get down when the train does an unscheduled stop for few minutes in some tiny railway station or fields, like this one in Alakkudi.
I even got a chance to take this photograph during the Alakkudi stop in front of a rice field (Thanjavur is called the Rice granary of Tamil Nadu).
Last year I had been to “Madras to Chennai” a fine play by Shraddha group. Impressed by the show I became an annual paid member. This new year 2012, there first production is a historical play – Vadavooran (வாதவூரன்). It is about Manickavachagar (மாணிக்கவாசகர்) who gave the great Tamil work Thiruvasagam (திருவாசகம்). The play starts from the point where Vadavooran who was the Chief Minister to Pandya King, sets out to buy fine Roman horses for the king. On the way while at the depleted temple at Tiruperunturai Avudiyar Koil, he realizes the Supreme Being (Lord Siva) and instantly decides to renovate and rebuild the temple. The king imprisons Vadavooran and punishes him severely for disobeying his orders. The play ends with great floods in Vaigai river and the King realizes his folly and Vadavooran becoming the enlightened Manickavachagar. Of course we all know what happened later (Thanks to Sivaji Ganesan’s Thiruvilayadal movie) – Lord Siva coming as a labourer carrying sand for a handful of a traditional snack of sweetened millet flour (புட்டு).
The play is presented in kind of Opera format. To make mortals like me understand the songs from Thiruvasagam, the organizers gave out free booklet with all the songs and meanings – thanks to them I could follow the 4 lines songs, which were not many. The songs were pre-recorded but rendered and enacted superbly. The lead actor is Swaminathan Ganesan, who has done a brilliant job of bringing the character to life. Especially the scenes where he is in inner turmoil between his royal duties and divine calling, Swaminathan brings Vadavooran before our eyes. The little girl who came as Vadavooran’s daughter performed well, kudos to her.
The sets were done nicely, I could not help comparing it to the astonishing set and special effects done decades earlier in R.S.Manohar’s plays that my father took me during my school days, Vadavooran certainly is not in that league but nevertheless it is a great effort for recent times considering the effort and costs. They showed a dragon fly (தும்பி) flying in the stage by suspending it from a rope above, the engineer in me wondered why they didn’t use one of those miniature remote helicopters and then cover it with a costume. The audience were taken for a treat when they showed a real horse on the stage – that should have been difficult managing it and controlling with the changing light effects, great show.
What impressed me most is the on time start of the play, in fact they started the brief introduction a few before 7:00PM. Thanks.
Shraddha doesn’t repeat its plays. So catch ‘Vaadhavooran’ tomorrow.
Review of the play is in the The Hindu here, Behind the scenes work and photos here.
Videos: In Tamil (முன்னோட்டம்), In English (Trailer)
Since I heard about this movie early this year I have been wanting to see this “Midnight in Paris” directed by Woody Allen. Today I watched it in the flight to London.
The movie is about Gil (played by Owen Wilson), who is a successful Hollywood screenwriter and his fiancée, Inez (played by Rachel McAdams) who are visiting Paris. Gil is obsessed with Paris and finishing his first novel which is about what he thinks are the magical times in 1920 Paris. One of the night he is magically transported to 1920 era in Paris where he gets to meet and mix with all legendary writers of that time including Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. 1920 Paris was a melting pot for many of the legendary American Artists and writers to come down (kind of a reverse travel from Americas to Europe). Gil is obsessed with that era and falls in love with a girl of that era but then returns to present, breaks with his fiancée and lives in Paris.
A nicely scripted and directed movie by Woody Allen. A must watch.
My friend shared the DVD of this movie, with two questions – are you a movie lover and do you see animated movies?. I was puzzled a little with the questions, anyways being a true Indian & someone who never turns down the opportunity to get (borrow) something free, I said “YES” and came home with two DVDs in my hand. One of them was “Grave of the Fireflies”, at that time I never realized the impact this movie will leave in me.
Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 Japanese animated war film written and directed by Isao Takahata. Taking place toward the end of World War II in Japan, the story is about the tale of two orphaned children, pre-teen Seita and his young sister Setsuko. Their father is in the Japanese navy, and they live comfortably in Kobe despite rationing, but when their mother dies from burns due to an American bombing raid, a distant aunt takes them in — and conflict eventually forces the children to try to survive on their own. The movie is all about their struggle in a war-torn town with no roof to their head or income; their little joyous moments in beach and with fireflies.
The movie was amazing, as one of the reviews had said “a must in every list of anti-war movies”. Due to the the storyline and brilliance of the Director you hardly feel it was an animated work with the two main characters especially the young girl portrayed so beautifully. In the last 15 minutes I couldn’t control water rolling over my eyes.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 96% is less and 8.4 rating in IMDB are both less, the movie deserves 10/10. A must watch movie.
I saw this movie today, The King’s Speech out of curiosity that it got nominated for Oscar under 12 categories.
The movie is about King George VI (before he became the king), to overcome his stammering is introduced to an unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue. Rest of the story is on how they work together and the King was made to deliver comfortably the Radio message on World War II. The movie is not about politics, war or about monarchy but mainly about the struggle of a man to overcome his weakness. The movie is very nicely scripted and acted. A must see and a worthy contestant for the Oscars.
After I watched the movie, reading on Wikipedia, I learned that King George VI was the father of present British Monarch – Queen Elizabeth II, and it was during King George VI reign that India got its independence.
This movie shows why British Comedy is the best when it comes to Political satires. After “Yes Prime Minister” I enjoyed this thoroughly. I don’t remember how I came across this movie this week, but immediately I got it in Amazon VOD service for $10. Yes, you need a US Credit Card and US IP address to download the VOD movies.
The movie “In the Loop” is a British Comedy movie that leads up to the decision in UN to invade IRAQ. We are lead to understand the British Prime Minister and the US President want to embark on a war in the Middle East. Simon Foster, a British Minister for International Development, states off the cuff in a radio interview that "war is unforeseeable". He later tries to correct it with another statement: "to walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict". Both these remarks start a series of manoeuvrings on both sides of the Atlantic by both the pro- and anti-war factions in both governments.
What makes the movie enjoyable and not come out as a documentary is the fact the movie names no particular president or prime minister. The movie leads you to believe that whoever is in administration they are likely to be incompetent and ripe with internal politics. Lot of nice little things are in the movie like "Simon Foster being just a meat in the room”, When not able to influence a decision the idea to leak the information against the war, Simon Foster while waiting outside US Asst. Secy of State office not knowing whether the meeting is over or not, a local voter from Simon Foster constituency keep pestering on a wall about to collapse and so on.
I will rate this movie to be must watch if you enjoy this genre.
This is one movie that anyone using FaceBook or any other social sites should certainly not miss out. It shows how a great idea coupled with a fine execution results in a runaway success, along the way you are sure to earn enemies. I have been waiting for the release of this movie “The Social Networking”. It is good to have the movie released in India after its US release last month. Having decided suddenly we couldn’t get tickets in INOX or Satyam, so we went for this movie with our friends at Mayajaal. The movie showed in the new Screen 12 at Mayajaal which has a bigger screen than their other screens. I was not sure whether my wife will like the movie if it becomes documentary like or too technical, but the movie was enjoyed by all of us.
The movie is about the founding years of FaceBook.com. What makes the movie interesting is the way the story is told. Instead of telling the sequence of events, the Director throughout the film shows Mark Zuckerberg testifying in depositions in two lawsuits: one filed by the Winklevoss twins (his seniors in Harvard who claimed to have come with the idea first), and the other filed by Eduardo (his friend at Harvard and co-founder). This technique of showing the present-day lawsuit and flash-back scenes make the movie fast-paced and captivating. All the actors in the film have done a great job in portraying the living characters they have taken, especially Jesse Eisenberg who portrays Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield who plays Eduardo Saverin and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker (Founder of Napster) have done a superb job.
After seeing the movie I was reminded of the book I read last year (Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good). Immediately I went back to my library and read again the chapter on FaceBook – I was able to enjoy it now more than the first time.
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