Madurai is the ‘cultural capital’ of the state of Tamil Nadu, SE India. We visited in January 2011, around the time the local people were celebrating Pongal, a multi-day harvest festival specific to this region and Sri Lanka.
We weren’t aware of the celebrations, but they’re impossible to miss. Rice flower is used to decorate streets, steps and faces, and most Hindu locals take part in the celebrations. That said, we were more interested in wandering the back streets and discovering the delights of this vibrant city.
Typically, Liz and I avoided the main sights to begin with, instead opting to follow our noses through residential areas and building sites.
It didn’t take long to stumble across a seemingly abandoned building that, it turned out, was a bedding stuffing centre.
At four stories high with a broad, external staircase, labourers marched up and down with hessian sacks of foam.
Close by, many street traders work in the materials industry, including tailors with sewing machines and ironing boards.
Serving these workers were the obligatory tea stalls, found on pretty much every street corner in India!
Meanwhile, women buy and sell food from street stalls.
And for every industrious worker, there’s another taking it easy in the tropical heat.
Pongal is derived from the Tamil word, pongu, meaning to ‘boil over’, symbolising prosperity and abundance.
Of course, being in India, as tourists, and with the time coinciding with a religious festival, it would be remiss of us not to visit a temple. As western tourists go, we’re not big temple-goers, but let me assure you that the temples in Madurai are some of the stand-out features of this crazy city. And because it was Pongal, many residents of Tamil Nadu were making a pilgrimage to the city by foot.
Perhaps we’ll revisit this experience in another photography blog post.
First published April 1st, 2011
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