Tour of thiruvaheendra puram Temple town....cuddalore.0n 28 &29 .10 .13

The top floor terrace overlooked the only busiest inter section of Cuddalore ,a small and neat town whose traffic on the road was so small in comparison to that of Chennai even at peak hours that brought in its wake, laughter of relief.
 The early morning air was fresh and spiced slightly with the special  saltish twang of coastal areas.The sky was awash with white cranes flying in formations to  a specified secret distant destination in earnest silence.The squeal of some birds attracted my attention .It was that of pairs of white crested eagles  or Garuda's who were circling overhead leisurely and settled   gracefully on tree tops and then again taking off
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Seeing them i was reminded of Sri Desikan and his sanskrit slokas- Garuda panchgam, the Sri vaishnavaite acahrya of 14 th cent whose journeys across south i was tracing and the purpose of my journey to this town.
Sri Desikan lived in nearby hamlet Thiruvanheendrapuram for 40 long years
The place is as untouched by time and is more or less like it would have been at his time.
Vishnu is enshrined as Devanatha perumal in the temple since ancient times. The inlay of silver and gold plating's on pillars, entrance and doors inside the temple is breathtaking and reminded me of the gorgeous and rich decorations of temples at Manglore mainly that of srivenaktaramana temple

A flight of steps cut on the vertical wall of a hillock right in front of the temple takes one to the summit where Sri Desikan meditated often .This is a quiet place with a good view of fields and villages down below.It is here in one of his moments of solitude and connection that he received the blessings of Haygreeva an  avatar of Vishnu known for bestowing knowledge like Saraswati.Desikan then consecrated the idol along with the idol of the vehicle of Vishnu- Garuda [unlike the usual of practise of enshrining garuda outside the sanctum] and worshipped the chosen deity ever since and was  blessed with uninterrupted  literary flow  in form of Sanskrit and Tamil slokas ,philosophical treatises,shastras ,and innumerable poetic and scholarly works.It was in here that his Sanskrit works on Rama and slokas on Garuda were written.

Thanks to the efforts of earlier pontiffs of Ahobila mutt the place where Sri Desikan lived and held katha kaltshebham ---lectures  on dharma Hinduism and vaishnavism,in the tiny town below is well preserved .So is the well that Sri Desikan himself is said to have dug with his own hands as a challenge to one of his many adverasries .He was a versatile genius.

Maybe the call of the garudas that attracted my attention are the descendants of those garudas that must have attracted Desikan's attention as well as he sat meditating in total solitude on that uninhabited hillock and inspired him to write slokas of the bird that is considered to be the vehicle of Vishnu.

He used bis vivid imagination, command of language and scholarship purely to enhance sri vaishnaviam faith and philosophy.
Reading them and grasping their deep meanings is truly a delightful and exhilarating experience and his immense literary compositions are unrivalled;ed till date.

written on 30 .10.13 11 am

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