Granite.

On our return journey to Madurai,the ageing driver of the tourist taxi corrected me that the ugly looking craters on the road side were not hills blasted off for jelly stones but were granite quarries.He pointed at the huge slabs of rose tinted stones,placed one over the other on the road side and smaller stones spattered around and said that those were granite stones ,waiting for shipment abroad and continued in a very matter of fact tone that a local journalist who had written about this large scale quarrying of this precious stone , by a business set which was enriching themselves in 100's of crores ,was promptly beaten .

Auto and cab drivers are a mine of information .Politics---inter national, national and local; finances, and socio-religious matters are all on their finger tips!You name it and they have it.

During the rule of Pandya's,several centuries earlier it is fabled that in their kingdom with the capital at Madurai, lustrous pearls were heaped on the road sides to be sold!Those pearls have vanished in the vacuum of time.Now the void has been filled and have been replaced by an equally precious gem , granite!