The Sri Meenakshi Temple

Now pay attention, this is complicated. There are three main gods amoung the millions. They are as follows - Bramah, the creator of the universe, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer of evil. The Sri Meenakshi temple in Madurai boasts the biggest and oldest temple in South India, it is dedicated to Parvati who is Shiva's wife and legend has it that Shiva and Parvati were married in Madurai. The temple houses a shrine to Parvati and one to Shiva.

Shiva is represented mainly in two forms - the human form and in the form of a big bobby (as they might say in Glasgow) known as Shiva Lingham. In honour of their marriage, Shiva, in Lingham form, is carried from his shrine to Parvati's bedroom amid much music, chanting and dancing there to remain until the morning. As chance would have it, our visit to the temple coincided with the biggest day in the Shiva calendar.

In the days when the world was young there was a war between the Deamons and The Gods. One of the Deamons released a poison which would have killed every living thing. Seeing this, Shiva took a hit for the Gods by taking the poison into his mouth. Immediately, Parvati took Shiva by the throat to prevent him swallowing the poison. If Shiva could stay awake without swallowing the poison for 24 hours then he and everything else would live. Needless to say, he survived, saving the world in the process. It was this event which was being celebrated in the temple that night. The celebrations went on for 24 hours.

It was a real privilege to be in the temple that night. It is an enormous temple and it was packed with Shiva devotees dressed in their Sunday best sarees, chanting their prayers, dancing, burning incense, making food, prostrating themselves before the idols (serious trip hazard for tourists admiring the ceiling - oops!). The combination of colour, haunting chants and heady incense combined to produce a sense of the special spiritual nature of the place. The devotees were all very friendly, insisting on sharing their special holiday food with us and making sure that we didn't miss anything. There were very few tourists around and the atmosphere was very special - a very ancient site being used for its intended purpose as it had been for millennia rather that an archeological curiosity studied in the cold light of day.