Maximum Hindu

I believe I have found it: the Ultimate Hindu Temple. It's in Madurai, a biggish city in southern Tamil Nadu. It's one of the oldest cities in India, dating back to about 500BC, and it's pretty much always been spectacular. Hell, the Greeks knew about it. Nowadays I wouldn't call the city spectacular -it's the usual hive of concrete blocks and congested streets- but once you get to the center of this city you only need to look at one building to say "Oh, my my my".

In the heart of the urban tangle, it is only a matter of time before you find yourself facing a gigantic pyramid of technicolor Hindu gods. You've stumbled across one of the twelve towers of the massive Meenakshi temple, each one a soaring, psychedelic cacophony of twenty-headed gods, roaring tigers, twelve-armed demons, dancers balancing on each other's heads, and strangely colored monsters from every corner of the cosmos. Climb on top of any of the shops around (they have viewing galleries on the rooftops to lure you into their 'antique' shops) and one of the most fantastic city skylines you will ever see spreads before your eyes. The twelve gopura towers rise out of the temple grounds, facing off at various angles and heights between loose groupings of trees and an impeccably blue sky. It looks rather like the rebel base near the end of the first Star Wars movie, only with way more six-armed people riding elephants.

The temple is dedicated to Shiva and Meenakshmi, and celebrates the divine faithfulness between the couple. I don't know which scriptures they've been reading, but citing Shiva as a paragon of monogamy is a little...unique. Shiva is basically the big pimp daddy of the universe. In Shaivite legend he proves his superiority over Vishnu and Brahma by turning his cock into an infinite column of fire reaching from heaven to hell. The right honorable rapper Ludacris boasts of keeping hoes in many area codes; Shiva fucks hoes in many planes of existence. The priests at least have some justification for their claim. They say Shiva never dogs around on Meenakshi because she is dynamite in bed. At least they've got a better story than the priests in Kanniyakumari. The main temple there is dedicated to Kanya Devi, the Virgin goddess, another form of Parvati, wife of Shiva. Let me tell you, based on numerous sculptures I've seen, it's hard to believe that any form of Parvati could be a virgin. I've inspected the anatomy quite closely, making such astute observations as "What's that between Parvati's legs? Oh. It's Shiva's dick." It's pretty laughable to think that Shiva hasn't gotten around to plumbing the depths of his consort. Shiva doesn't exactly need red wine and a smooth jazz anthology to get the night off to a good start. He's just like "Heeeyyyyyy sugar, why don't we turn these lights off? Or naaww, we should leave them on. That's the universe. Either way you're going to have the night of your life...lives. Yeah, guess how long I can keep going, baby... Eternity."

From the outside the Meenakshi temple already an architectural stunner, but the interior is what really makes it the Ultimate Hindu temple. It's everything you think a Hindu temple should be: A massive labyrinth of dark and mighty corridors painted with exuberant designs that trail off into the darkness. At every turn there is a small carving or an idol smeared with holy paint, pilgrims' dye powders, ceremonial costumery, and garlands. Eery music echoes through the hallways and you're never far from the waft of incense or the flickering of candles. One hallway will take you to a sacred tank in the shadow of the captivating towers, and another will take you into a grand hall with golden pillars, aromatic shrines, and sacred diagrams placed seemingly at random. There are pilgrims everywhere, most of them everyday people reveling in the proximity of the divine, while the legion of priests patter about imperiously attending to the never-ending schedule of truly arcane rituals they are obliged to perform. I was walking through one such massive hallway deep inside the temple, looking up through the darkness to examine the vibrant floral motifs on the ceiling when I heard the jangling of bells approaching me, and out of nowhere comes this elephant, painted all over its face with magical symbols and marks of devotion to Shiva. I spent hours and hours in the temple, stalking groups of pilgrims to see series of rituals, hanging around popular idols to watch offerings, and above all lurking about near where the elephant had been led to dispense its trunk-tapping blessings to the masses. It's pretty much the coolest place ever. You should check out the photos I posted of Madurai (because they're banging).

There's more to Madurai than just the temple. There's also a pretty cool vegetable market, which is the place to go if you want to wander around smelling four-foot high piles of cilantro (and who doesn't?), then walk into the main street and awkwardly hobble over the enormous pools of discarded vegetable matter in the street. There's about four city blocks that are paved almost entirely with carrot stalks and onions, and smashed pools of dry chillies large enough to kill a horse. Some of the other bazaars are actually inside other little temples in the city center, so when I went and had my Awesome Teal Pants made, I hired the services of a local tailor whose foot-powered loom was under a solid black goddess idol draped in flowers, colored paste, and robes. Two Indian dragons flanked the shop from which I bought Learn Tamil In 30 Days.

By the way, I am not learning Tamil in 30 days. Even just learning the system of writing is diabolically complicated. In Tamil not only are all the names really long, but each letter is a convoluted squiggle that is only a teeny bit different on one stroke from the other squiggles. To make matters worse, like Hindi you have to combine letters a bunch, but the Tamils only came up with about three different symbols for twelve or so vowels, so they just shift the ordering of the same symbols around the convoluted squiggles. The overall effect is that Tamil writing looks like Morse code, except that instead of dashes and dots each letter looks like something you would use to tie up sails on a yacht. You couldn't be blamed if you assumed that the writing was a hieroglyphic system and that the scribes concerned themselves only with tapeworms and noodles.

Oh, and also being told that getting my Awesome Teal Pants repaired after my bus accident would be "Impossible", I just found a place that did it in about a minute for ten rupees. The bandages I bought put me back another fifty and my various jets of blood seem to be closing up and should heal pretty soon, so all getting hit by a bus set me back was...about $1.25. Yeah, I had a clash with a bus and won. "But Ghostface," you ask "How can you be left bloodied and pained and still claim a victory???" Ha! You should see the bus!