Let us go on a short tour to Thanjavur.
On hearing this, my wife must have thought that I was playing out a cruel joke. The Thanjavur that we knew of had nothing but temples. Temples? and me, a staunch atheist? Two months ago, when I had to visit Guruvayoor with the family, I happily stayed outside listening to a Carnatic music concert. My facebook update, immediately afterwards:‘After many years, the mortal Kannan agreed to descend on a temple premises and to Guruvayur, no less. His immortal namesake has turned semi-modern, allowing entry for salwar-clad women. But men – they still have to appear shirtless in all their flabby splendour and sweaty odour. At the end, both had it our way, with the blasphemous me, barred entry and banished outside with a bag of cellphones.’
But Thanjavur is a different story. The historic, cultural and aesthetic aspects hold enough appeal for me to overrule the atheistic objections. Apart from a sudden history-itch created by renewed interest in Tamil literature and inspiration from the travelogues of the renowned Tamil writer, Jeyamohan, another reason why we chose Thanjavur, was because we thought that not many others would make that choice during the December holidays. Surprisingly, most hotels in Thanjavur, seemed to be full. I managed to book us on a low-end hotel which, however, had good reviews on Tripadvisor. We started from home (Bangalore) at 3pm. And, spent another hour hunting for pant-type Pampers for Mahirl Malar (மகிழ்மலர்), my 2-year-old daughter, rushing from Reliance to Spencers to Foodworld and finally finding the right-sized diapers at an unlikely little place in Koramangala. So, it was almost 4pm, when I, irritatedly, stepped up on the accelerator of our Honda City, in anticipation of atleast an 8-hour drive. I have a history of doing a bit of sleep-driving after 10.
The drive till Namakkal was smooth. After Namakkal, the roads were getting increasingly rugged. The big temple at Thanjavur has survived the fury of a thousand years. The roads to Thanjavur have succumbed to the smile of a single monsoon. I fought off the worn-off roads and the sleep-induced driving errors to reach Trichy. Thankfully, the roads after Trichy, were good enough to carry us safely to the desolate streets of Thanjavur. We woke the guards up, in the haunted-looking hotel, and checked into a stuffy room. The AC was working and the bathroom was decent. There were only a few mosquitoes. What more can we ask for? The next day, we found accommodation at a betterhotel and shifted there.
The Thanjavur Palace, built by Nayak rulers in 1550 AD and expanded by the Marathas, has been converted into multiple pockets of interest. There are multiple versions of Natarajas and Ammans in the bronze statues…I wasnt expert enough to spend time and spot the subtle differences that must have been present, and more so, when there is a 2-year-old demanding attention. We also spent a lot of time, experimenting with the new Nikkor lens (55-300mm) and capturing Mahirl in a myriad poses, than in seeing the statues. The palace tower, almost resembled a temple gopuram, and interestingly, the stairs to the higher levels were open for the tourists. The narrow stairs made me wonder how the fat rajahs would have made their way up.
There were paintings, there were kitchen utensils and various other everyday articles, which assume importance only because of their age and their royal owners. The 6-foot mirror of the kings, still reflected the same-old me.
The must-see place within the palace is the Saraswati Mahal library, conceived by the Nayak kings in the 16th century and nourished by the Marathas, particularly, Maharaja Serfoji during early 18th century. Thecollection of over 54000 books is awesome – ranging from ancient Tamil manuscripts to the then modern European books. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary caught my eyes. I was blown away when I saw a Tamil-English dictionary printed in the 1810s (I think this was the first Tamil-English dictionary, published in 1779 by Fabricius and Breithaupt, missionaries at Madras). I was earlier thinking that the Mirlon-Winslow dictionary, published in 1862, was a phenomenal work.
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