Pallaandu pallaandu....
“Archanai will be done in Tamil” I read as both of us were standing in the long queue, waiting to get a glimpse of Arjuna’s charioteer. The Parthasarathyswamy temple, Chennai’s oldest surviving temple, situated in Triplicane, once‘Thiru Alli Keni’ (‘The divine Lilly pond’ is the literal translation), has withstood the challenges that time has thrown on it for centuries, witnessing everything that has happened in Chennapatnam, Madras and Chennai. For many years a Brahmanical stranglehold, or rather a Sri Vaishnava stranglehold, Triplicane has retained its traditional charm and flavour even as modernisation has, for many years now, slowly invaded its territory. The narrow alleyways between rows of ancient Aiyangar houses and shops doesn’t seem to hinder, even a wee bit, the unceasing traffic of bikes to cars to cycles to tricycles to cows to what not. The temple is hailed as one among the 107 ‘Divyadesams’, that every follower of ‘Visishtadvaitam’ has to visit in his life so that he