It is six O'clock in the morning as we pass the outskirts of Madurai.  The city has expanded at least five times in the past fifteen years.  Endless stretches of houses, dirty statues of politicians, tattered flags and posters of their parties, cows, dogs and pigs pass by regularly before we cross the eastern border that has extended at least by ten kilometers in the past fifteen years. I cannot help remembering my childhood days riding on a bicycle to some of the orchards along the Vaigai River.  Once you crossed the water tank at Teppakulam, which was a sleepy area of Madurai even till late 80s, you used to have a feeling of being outdoors, with orchards and brick furnaces on both sides of the road that itself was shaded by huge tamarind trees.  We have to drive 10 minutes from Teppakulam now to have any vague sense of being outdoors!
 
For the first time since my arrival at Chennai four days before, only after we have driven around a half hour from Madurai, I feel I am breathing.  I have continuously had the sensation of the foul air of automobile exhaust since the moment I got out of the airport.  My lungs, after an initial resistance to it, had luckily adjusted to it, but my sensitivity to it wouldn't.  I couldn't help the constant sensation of having to breathe that foul odor and air which was getting on my nerves and making me irritable.  Mingled with the sizzling heat of the sun which was at its peak even in October, the thousands of automobiles that crawled on the dusty streets of Madurai let out a poison that seemed to hang like an invisible gloom all over the city.  I was literally suffocated by it every moment whether I was inside or outside the house.  A friend told me that in a small city as Pondicherry itself there were seventy five new two wheelers registered everyday for purchase!  Madurai seemed to be shuddering at the dust and smoke raised by the thousands of these two wheelers that crawled amidst whatever space was available between the streets!
 
So it comes as a big relief to me to breathe normally though I have to travel at least fifteen kilometers from the city.  The Vaigai river that passes all along us is bone dry and appears dismal, but at least it is inhabited only by thorn shrubs and not by houses and automobiles, and hence a relief to the eyes and the nose.  The mind that has become restless by the ugliness that is the creation of man seems to me to perceive quicker the fine contrast of nature in whatever form it is, for it is a refuge that is getting rarer and rarer in our times, and that too amidst the frantic so-called development in India. My friends (from Madurai) hardly even seem to notice the difference in the environment as we are out of the suffocating city!  When I tell them how I felt, one of them indifferently says he heard somewhere that in the next few years it would be a good business opportunity to open a chain of air-conditioned kiosks where one can breath in a few minutes of stored pure oxygen for a price! Who knows, it could be a reality on my next visit!  That such a thing would become a 'business opportunity' is precisely the plague we have destroyed our world with!  Greed and nothing but it seemed to me to be the only motivating factor of most people I met.
 
We are in our way to Rameshwaram and I had also added a quick visit to Dhanushkodi. I have heard of this ghost town but never visited it.  One quick hour, I had planned.

It is bone dry all our way but when we have our first glimpse of the ocean near Mandapam, it is very beautiful.  The sky and the ocean offer a contrasting blue along with the white stretch of a long shore line.  The sand is snow-like and the ocean, the deepest blue! We drive our tiny car into the first fishing village we come across.  It is desolate except for a few stray fishing boats languidly dancing in the gentle waves.  We drive our car as far as the battered road takes us into the beach that is littered with all kinds of garbage.  It is eight o'clock but the sand on the beach is already warm!   It is a pleasure to walk on the warm sand with bare legs.  The beach is deserted.  I cannot resist running to the invitingly blue water and wow, how wonderfully warm it is, as the waves wash my feet! Many a time in North America I have been terribly disappointed to feel how cold the water was even when the sun was in the 90s, but here it is perfect for a splash. 
 
There is a small hut on the beach, out of nowhere, which seems to have been a tea shop once.  The price that the rusted board displays should be at least five years old.  We walk along the long stretch of beach over the gentle waves to the village where an old fisherwoman is spreading fish and squid on the already warm tar road to dry.  The whole place reeks of rotting fish but there is a charm in that quietness, with the only sound that of the surf.  The squid that she is spreading out from a basket looks like sea weed and is slimy.  I doubt if my kids would ever eat fried Kalamari (squid) which is a tasty starter in sea food restaurants if they saw the squid that lay in her basket.   She is entirely oblivious of me as I shoot some pictures of her picking the squid from the basket in handfuls and spreading it.   I ask her if I can touch one.  She simply stares at me.  Her eyes are vacant and seem to notice nothing. I wonder how her life would be drying fish and squid everyday in that desolate village where there is nothing but the surf and the burning sun. The old woman appears to me like another inanimate object as the dead fish and squid and the shanty huts around.   With an uneasy hand I lift a squid by its tentacles.  It is greasy and tries to slip out of my hand, though it is not alive.   
 
Desolate as it is, there is yet a quaintness in that silent village that smells of fish and salt. The irregularly built huts, the silence, the bright sun, the white sands, the blue sky and the even bluer ocean are mesmerizing and I have to pull myself back on a long walk alone on the gentle and warm waves to my friends.  We drive off. 
 
It is my experience on most of my trips that such stopovers offer more charm than the destination.  I hardly have any idea of what an experience later in the day our other stopover at Dhanushkodi is going to be…
 
The Devipattinam Temples
 
I have always liked to visit as many temples as I can whenever I visit India.  So, when my friend tells me about a special Navagraha Temple , where the deities are half submerged in the Sea, in a place called Devipattinam which was only a little off our route to Rameshwaram, I readily accept.  So, off a road near Ramnad we turn.  The sun is up now in that dry region and we see a dazzling stretch of white reflecting the sun in the distance with white mounds that appear like the snow piled up on the frozen lakes during winters here in North America.  What a paradox to think of ice when water would only and quickly too evaporate in such weather?  It didn't strike me that there could be a salt pan in this region, for I have seen them only in the Tuticorin region.  But as we drive further, we find a huge area with glittering salt spread on the pans and conical shaped huge mounds of salt all around the pans.  The sun is scorching already but in that bright sun with the crystal blue sky above, the white world of the salt pans looks beautiful.  We turn the car on the bumpy unpaved road between the salt pans and stop by.  With a child-like curiosity we get out of the car and walk between the pans to see the vast sheets of salt that is being dug out by a few women and piled up in glittering white hillocks.  I remember in my childhood days such crystals of salt sold in carts.  My mom would use it for mixing it in rice floor.  I have watched with fascination how it would sink slowly in the thick rice flour.  I don't know if such unprocessed salt is being sold in the market today.  I chew a few crystals.  They taste very good!
 
We drive ahead to the Navagraha Temple.  It is a small village Temple but the Navagraha deities are on the sea.  There is a short walking bridge to the deities and a few people are offering their prayer going round the deities in the waist deep water.  Beyond the deities the sea spreads calm like a vast lake.  Of the nine Grahas only five are above the water.  In that morning sun, it is a wonderful feeling to pray to the Navagrahas in such a wonderful outdoor setting. The vast blue sea behind the deities offers a mystic feeling that enhances the sense of piety one feels in a temple.  Elsewhere, at Vellore I believe, I have seen Shiva personified as the water element and in a pool of water inside the Sanctum, but here the deities are in broad outdoors and that too in the Sea itself, which is wonderful.  We still have a couple of hours more to drive and hence have to leave reluctantly. 
 
After a short break at the Pamban bridge, we arrive at Rameshwaram without any further ado.  The city is deserted since it is only two days before Deepavali.  A few North Indians are wandering aimlessly in the hot sun.  There are all kinds of fascinating sea shells being sold in the road-side shops which are all empty.  We take lunch at a restaurant that has its name board in Hindi!  The servers too speak in Hindi only!  I feel strange that we are not allowed to enter in with our sandals on, though we eat sitting in tables and though there are hundreds of flies!  But the food is very good: rotis and parottas with tasty sabji.  The temple is closed for the afternoon.  As we had planned it is time to go for a quick visit to Dhanushkodi.
 
After we cross the potholes of the city and a few kilometers of densely wooded road, we are suddenly out into the open.  It is a vast stretch of shallow sea on our left which looks like a vast mirage in the bright sunlight.  There is sand all over the road in many places which has sidewalls built to prevent it piling up the road and obstructing the traffic.  It is a huge wasteland but very picturesque.  The road is straight as a piece of taut string.  We see the Rama Temple in a distance shimmering in the heat wave behind the shallow sea interspersed with white sandy islands.  It is believed that this is the spot where Vibishana met Sri Rama and surrendered himself.  The wonderful folklore of Ramayana, that captured the mind and imagination of ancient and medieval India still holds its powerful sway and brings so many tourists, particularly the North Indians who are more pious than the South Indians (as it has always appeared to me) to Rameshwaram and its suburbs.  One could walk miles and miles in that lagoon in knee deep water, as it appeared.  It is a great relief for me to be in such a wonderful vastness after being cramped in Madurai city for five days.  The sun is terribly hot and I can see heat waves dancing over the ocean causing a refraction of everything that was visible but the vastness and the calm sensation is out of this world. 
 
It is a 15 kilometer scenic drive and we abruptly reach a fishing village with shanty huts scattered all around the beach and a beautiful roaring sea. It is nice to see huge waves rolling after we have seen a languid sea all our way. We cannot drive further than that village.  There is a navy post with a few young navy officers roaming in sun glasses.  I meet a tourist there who has come from Assam and he complains bitterly as to how unequipped our army is.  This place is within a short boat ride from Srilanka and he is angry that the navy doesn't have a proper boat! We have tea in a picturesque shop on the beach that is facing the sea.  My friend feeds a masal vadai to a goat which eats it gleefully and asks for more! I am tempted to dive into the roaring blue ocean that sparkles in the afternoon sun but we are short of time. 
 
There are a few four wheel drive trucks which are the only source of transport between that point and Dhanushkodi.  Those guys charge Rs.1000 for one truck.  Either you pay it yourself or you find others who can split it with you! I was about to take one with my three friends when a bus arrives and suddenly we have twelve more people to share it with!  The truck is nothing but a fish transport vehicle with something resembling a cushion placed vertically.  It smells of fish and garbage.  We board in like cattle and like baskets of fish placed in every nook and corner find our space! I board in last, for I prefer to sit on the floor with my legs hanging outside the truck.  There is a rope hanging from the ceiling to hold on to and we begin our bumpy ride towards Dhanushkodi.

The Ruins of Dhanushkodi
 
The truck takes a sharp turn off the metal road in a few hundred meters and we are off into the shallow lagoon unawares.  There is loose wet sand all over and the assistant has to place a wooden board under the wheels in many places for traction.  It is an extremely bumpy ride; when the truck speeds in the shallow lagoon over a few inches of water in many places splashing it all around, it is like riding in a boat!  I wonder how people commuted when Dhanushkodi was inhabited! There is shallow water all around for miles and miles.  In such a vastness where there is nothing made by humans around, except for a few battered fishing boats, and a few lovely sea birds flying around, you forget yourself and suddenly become a child!  Your heart fills in with a joy that is elusive in the material achievements of our mundane life.  For, your mind is one with the elements around and least hampered by its habits of association that brings it its acquired sense of happiness.  In such vastness you feel one with the cosmos itself, the natural environment of the human soul – the vague memories of such a relationship that remained unconscious and which started fading off as one grew up in age is suddenly brought back to your conscious mind by the spectacular scenery around. The mid-day sun that I am entirely exposed to sitting in the corner of the truck is burning my head and back but I have become oblivious of it overwhelmed by the spectacular vastness around me that paradoxically seem to numb all my sensations by alerting them to their fullest sensitivity! 

The powerful four wheel truck pants and puffs in its track over loose-sand, slush and knee-deep water in places, but it is a very enjoyable ride though it is difficult to sit comfortably.  And it is a long ride as well going deeper and deeper into the lagoon that shimmers in blue and white.
 
A few buildings suddenly come into our view in the distance.  They are pretty creepy since they appear suddenly out of the blue and are all half collapsed.  I understand that it should be the village of Dhanushkodi.  Even in the distance they look forlorn.  The truck speeds past the village towards the tip of the land where the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean meet.  They are called as the Male and Female seas for some reason.  And finally when the truck stops at the point where the land ends, all are relieved to get down and rest a while their rattled joints.  It should be a 45 minutes drive in the hot sun and that too a very unsteady one.  There is nothing on that beach except for a long stretch of white sand and the ocean – but the ocean appears to be playing tricks with a cinematic effect!   On one side there are waves and on the other it is silent! My friend who didn't know swimming rushes to wet his legs on the silent side and lo, he is already in two feet of water wetting his entire pant on his first step itself! It is very deep and its calm water is very deceptive.  There is no warning sign anywhere.  I ask the truck driver if the ocean on this side was deep and he nods! 
 
There is a North Indian tourist with us, an elementary school teacher, who is on a pilgrimage to the South all by himself.  He is from some village.  The moment he gets out of the truck, he turns towards the Sea and starts praying.  It is believed that Sri Rama took off to Srilanka from this place to wage the war.  I am moved by his simple and unassuming piety.  He looks poor but he has come all the way from his remote village to be blessed by the land where Sri Rama is believed to have walked once.  What a magnificent sense of devotion the Ramayana has unconsciously instilled on the Indian mind!  A literary work captures the imagination of a people unlike a religious book which only captures the conscious ethical mind at its best that invariably results in producing stultifying dogmas. Has there been a literary work elsewhere in the world that has permeated the heart of a nation and shaped its life by capturing a peoples' imagination as the Ramayana?   How much of warmth in life and its sustenance the Ramayana has provided in nurturing simple literary-truth based beliefs that are inevitable for living!  He asks me if I can take his picture and send it to his postal address.  I gladly agree and take three pictures of him. 
 
There are broken boats everywhere in the beach.  The storm that washed Dhanushkodi forty five years before seems to have destroyed this entire region.  It is a vast waste land, white and hot, but beautiful beyond words.  The truck that brought us there is an anomaly as it stands far on the beach. 
 
We drive back towards the ruins of Dhanushkodi.  Bouncing over the loose sands our truck stops near a refreshment store, which is nothing but a big hut.  There are a few such 'shops' nearby selling all kinds of sea shells and soft drinks.  As we get down and walk further we see the remains of a railway station and a church.  The railway station seems to have been a solid stone structure and there are four stone pillars nearby which should have held a water tank once.  That they are in ruins now is an indicator of the ferocity of the storm that washed away this city. 
 
The ruins all around slowly start holding a sway on my mind.  These ruins are not caused by time and their settings in a beach where there is nothing but emptiness seem to add a heightened sense of pathos to them.  As I walk I see the remains of a tar road buried in sand leading straight to the sea!   The sand has consumed everything in course of time except for the collapsed walls of a few scattered buildings with exposed bricks which stand as mute witness to the terrible tragedy.  I remember the Dinosaur monument in Vernal, Utah, where they have kept intact the fossils of the dinosaurs in a cliff and constructed a museum around it.  This village appears to me as a similar vast monument (of nature's fury, in this case) with each crumbling building left untouched, since the village was abandoned after the storm.  There is a strong hot wind blowing from the sea. I cannot help feeling a terrible sense of loneliness as I walk amidst the ruins.  I am alone, for I prefer to be far away from my chattering friends who cannot have their eyes fixed on one place for a while to let their mind absorb what they were seeing.  There is a big building which was once a school. The insides of it are strangely covered two thirds with mounds of sand.  I climb the sand to what should have been the first floor and one of the classrooms.  More than feeling eerie, a sad sensation overwhelms me.  It would have had kids once, most of who would have been washed away that fateful night of the storm.  The wind is howling through the broken windows.  There is a cheerful sight of the bright sea before me, but I feel as if I am standing over a tomb and with my legs buried a few inches in the sand, it is a powerful sensation!   I cannot help questioning the purpose of human life.  Such ruins are constant reminders to that troublesome question but I think that it is a question that signals the first glimmerings of a flowering of human consciousness.  Paradoxically, death seems to acutely arise in one the question of life.  And when one stood on a graveyard of a city as that, one cannot escape asking that troublesome question. 
 
I pass through every broken building.  There is a haunting sense of death everywhere.  You don't see human corpses as you see after a flood or any other natural calamity, but the suggestion is still poignantly there.  All the tourists are far away happily sipping a drink sold in those shops and busy shooting pictures of themselves before the ruined church and hardly interested in exploring further.  I find a small lonely temple under a thatched roof which has a Lingam and a priest.  He tells me the story of the storm which he must have recited more than a thousand times to thousands of tourists.  After wandering listlessly for a long while amidst the ruins, I see my fellow travelers, far on the beach, already in the truck waiting for me.  I reluctantly return. 
 
As I get into the truck, I have a last look at the ghost city.  The sea that is so picturesque must have been a monster on that fateful night.  A few hundred people having lost their lives is a pretty insignificant number when we look at the waste of human life we see every day today because of man-made conditions themselves, but the city in its stark ruins stirs something deep in one's mind and makes one restless.  I feel at peace only after I have a darshan of the shivalinga at Rameshwaram whose blissful face seem to say to me, as Krishna's words soothed Arjuna's mind in turmoil: 'anityam asukhaḿ lokam imaḿ prāpya bhajasva mām' ('Thou who have come to this unhappy and transient world, love and turn to me').