My experience in Melukote

Whenever, I start speaking(or writing) about Melkote I get really excited and fascinated as it is one of the small towns which is really rich in heritage and culture. Moreover, as it is Amma’s birth place, she do get really excited every time we are planning a trip to Melkote. However, this time around our trip got postponed umpteen number of times for last 3 months. Thank god, this Sunday (May 04, 2008) we were destined to be in Melkote come-what-may.

Amma, Appa, Anand and myself were really geared up for the trip. However, woke up really early in the morning and got ready petty fast. Amma and Appa was really geared up as they woke up by 4.00 in the morning and started cooking our breakfast and lunch for paati and nacchu mama. Finally, we packed breakfast and some pooja items to car's trunk. We started off the trip quite early in the morning by 7.00 a.m. I started driving on the Bangalore Mysore state highway and on reaching the Mandya town, we took a right turn which goes to Melkote. After moving for some distance, Amma asked me to stop over near one of the village to have our breakfast. I stopped at one of the village by 9.15 a.m. where we had our breakfast. Now, Anand was very much eager to drive for the rest of the journey and took over the driver’s seat. I started reading today’s newspaper in detail when he drove muttering and grumbling across the village people. The cows whom the villagers had left in open was sleeping on the road, dogs used to come in front of our car quite often, huge bullock carts used to block the road where he was unable to overtake for a short period of time until the road widens. Frankly, moving across a village road is like looking over Domestic life sanctuary where we saw most of the domestic animals along the way. On the other hand, early morning dew had covered the place with all the bright colours .. Bright Green pastures, clear blue sky, bright yellow bougenvilla flowers, etc was a beautiful invitation for us to Melukote. Amma too commented saying " Look at the city life and look at the village life. We are just running from one end of the city to another with lots of tension whereas here the people are enjoying the nature and leading a simple, pleasant and satisfied life" Hmm ..i thought about the statement for a while and later started running through the paper. At last after all the village episodes, we reached Melukote by 10.00 a.m. exactly. We went to our aunt’s place, washed our feat and immediately started heading towards Thirunarayana swamy temple.

Have you heard about Melukote? If not no problem, please allow me to explain in brief. I am very eager to explain you all more about it.

Melukote (also known as Thirunarayanapuram) is in Pandavapura taluk of Mandya district, Karnataka, is one of the most sacred places in Karnataka. It is built on rocky hills known as Yadavagiri or Yadugiri just besides Kaveri valley. It is nearly 140 kms from Bangalore. Melkote has two distinct temples both of which has unique history and identity. One of them is an ancient shrine of Vishnu who is worshipped as ThiruNarayana Swamy, beautiful temple in the heart of the town. One of the spiritual leader, Ramanujacharya was associated with this Shrine for a very long period of time. Yoga Narasimha Swamy temple which is also an equally impressive temple resides on top of the hill. As per the history of this temple, Krishnaraja Wodeyar III presented a gold crown to this temple.

Hmm .. Do you want to know more about what History says? Here it is …

Sri Ramanujacharya (Srivaishnava saint) lived in Melukote for about 14 years (thats what the people here say). The preaching of Ramanujacharya enthralled many and it includes the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana, who had become a staunch follower of the Acharya. Thus, Melukote became a prominent centre of the Srivaishnava sect of Brahmins. However, as most of the places in India, this place too suffered at the hands of Muslim invaders in the 14th Century who totally wrecked the temples. It was later restored by Thimmanna Dannayaka, a chief of Nagamangala, who was an army commander of Vijayanagar king Mallikarjuna or Immadi Prabhudeva (cited from website). However, subsequent wars of Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and Maratha had affected the temples again on a large scale. Sad part is that you can see that most of the idols surrounding the Thirunarayana Swamy temples is nearly half broken.

We first moved to Cheluvanarayana Swamy temple also known as Thirunarayana swamy temple. This temple is very well known for its prestigious Vairamudi Sevai in the month of March-April, when the image of Selvappillai is adorned with a diamond crown and taken out in procession across the entire town. Lakhs of devotees throng to this place at this point of time. Please check over the image of the temple below. The idol is very pleasant looking and probably that's why it's called Cheluva Narayana (Cheluva means Beautiful in kannada).

Next, we moved towards the Badrinarayana swamy temple. Appa said that Melukote is also called as “Dakshina Badri” As Appa and amma had visited to Badrinath, they were advised to visit Melukote too within a short span which would then complete their “Thirtayatra”. Here, we saw a cute small idol of Vishnu.

Then, we went to Yoga Narasimha swamy temple on top of the hill. We walked around 300 to 400 steps which helped us to reach the temple which is shown in the image below. This is believed to be one of the seven holy center’s of Narasimha worship. One of the most fascinating experiences is the panoramic view of the surrounding vast area which we saw from top of the temple.

Kalyani: Our Next stop was in front of Kalyani. Kalyani is a large pond as shown in the picture below. The view of the hill top temple from here was mindboggling. The beauty of the steps leading to water and the mantapas built all around is entralling and is captured in many Indian films.

After the entire temple visits, we were damn tired. We decided to go to the Mutt near Thirunarayana swamy temple who invited us for the lunch. How can we say no to such an invitation at this point of time? We immediately barged into the mutt and had a really good lunch as we were literally starving after walking around the town in bare foot.

After finishing our lunch, we went to Akka-Thangi kola. This beautiful twin tanks are described as sister’s ponds and according to traditional accounts, where one of the sisters was very eager to create the pond where as the other agreed to join her hesitatingly. That’s why one of the water is crystal clear and very sweet to drink whereas the other pond is somewhat slushy and very salty ..obviously, not good to drink. Please check over the photos below of the Akka and thangi kola. They are situated one next to another.
Thangi Kola:

Akka Kola:

After viewing Kola(s), we went to Kote Vasil (or also called as Raja Gopura). It is an incomplete structure leading to the hill. It has four tall incomplete pillars. The sculptures on the pillars are very impressive. Popular myth is that the King wanted a grand entrance built within a night. And obviously a master piece can’t be built in a jiffy and it was left incomplete.

Now, after running across the entire breadth and width of the town, now was the time when my mom started catching with her old school buddies. We went to a couple of houses (one was called Batra mane and the other one was Shallu mama’s house). We had a good cup of coffee in the first house and juice (paanaka) in the latter’s house. Here, amma was excited to speak about her childhood pranks with her buddies. Amma was saying how she jumped across the wall to other's house, she was plucking flowers, fruits from neighbor's house without their notice, she was running across the town calling everybody with their nicknames etc etc .. We (Appa, Aaanu and myself) were just like sculptors on the temple who were just listening to all their talk, gossips and so on … no comments whatsoever.
Do you know that the idols (Utsav Murthy as we call) would be decorated very beautifully at the time of procession. We are not allowed to take photographs of the idol in the temple. However, i caught the decorated idols in one of the portraits in Amma's buddy house. Please look over the screenshot below.

Sighh …. It was time for us to leave back to materialistic Bangalore. I always would love to lead a life like them simple and satisfied. Alas .. .. life is not like that .. anyway .. :-(

Again, I convinced my brother that I would drive for a short while and would hand over the car back to him. I started driving back home by 4.00 p.m. and again moved across the same stretch of village but with much lesser cows and other domestic animals than what my brother encountered in the morning. However, I drove really slowly as appa, amma and aaanu were sleeping well and it was a bad stretch of road. After a hour’s of driving, we reached Mysore highway. I always wonder, how can my brother wake up at the right point and at the right time? Ugly .. he forced me to stop by the shoulder of the road and switched drivers. Now, it was my turn to go back to sleep. When I woke up we were not too far as we were stuck in a stupid slow moving traffic for a quite a long period of time. After winding, twisting, turning, grumbling and lots of other emotions, we reached home by 7.00 p.m exactly. Boy, we started speaking to each other saying that none of the earlier instances, we had such a good visit to Melukote within 12 hours.

Ok ..This is all i have from my side. It was a wonderful and eventful journey. Totally exhausted after such a nice experience. Appa, Amma and Aanu went to sleep a bit early whereas I didn’t get any sleep which prompted me to write this blog and it was a worthwhile stuff to do when you don't get sleep. Isn't it ???