In Chennai

Was in Chennai today for my son’s exam.

I was free to do anything from 9 am to 1:30 pm. With Google Maps on my Ipad guiding me, I drove around easily and visited the following places. The following places were randomly chosen and I did not have any knowledge of these places apart from having heard the places.

“Google maps” app on my ipad is an iphone app, but i installed it on my ipad and works better than regular “google maps” on browser i.e., Chrome ( Ipad now allows Chrome installation ) or Safari. I searched for “nearby attractions” from the point of my location and I chose the following 3 places for visiting.

“mapmyindia” on my car’s navigation did not show these attractions on ‘Nearby POI’ ( points of interest)

Marundeeswarar Temple at Thiruvanmyur
Asta Lakshmi Temple at Besant Nagar
St Thomas mount church

Marundeeswarar Temple at Thiruvanmyur

Marundeeswarar ( Marundu= Medicine, Eswar=God, rar=tag used after a name to indicate respect). Here the lord Siva i.e., Eswar/a was supposed to have given knowledge of medicine to sage Agastya and so the temple attracts people with problems with their health. Sage Valmiki was known to have worshiped the lord here. Lord Brahma is believed to have conducted a festival here for lord Shiva.Parking on main road attracts fine, So take your car into parking space next to the big temple pond outside the temple. ( There is another temple pond right inside the temple)

The gopurams or towers and are painted in multiple colors extravagantly bright and showy, but tasteless.

There is a regular vehicular traffic right in front of the temple tower. Most of those on the two wheelers, passing by the gopuram, instinctively turn their heads and offer a namaskar.