On our last day in Kodaikanal, we headed out to Pellangi to visit Benjamin
at his winter digs near Little Lillies Creche. He's house-sitting for a British woman who helped start a community to support a pottery in the 90's. We visited first with Sabramahiam, the plains potter Kamachi's son. Son works in stoneware, much finer clay and much higher fire than the red pot clay of pops. The younger train
ed in Chanai (Madras) with the Meekers, an American couple. The magnificent trolly loading wood-fired kiln was built with the supervision and help of a West Coast (American) kiln Guru. Greenware
– dried but unfired pots – await the kiln. We had a lovely tea, Benjamin and I exchanged picture and video files of the Creche pageants, then returned to Kodaikanal to pack and dine with Ann and Bruce. Early the next day, we were off to the Madurai airport via the famous Sri Meenakshi Temple and a little shopping in the wedding center (tailors, kitchenware) in the old temple gateway, still surrounded by Hindu deities. The largest of many temple spires (52 meters) is right on the street. The Godess Meenakshi was born with three breasts, the center one melting away to fulfill prophecy when she married Vishnu.
We didn't meet her in the Temple itself, probably because the inner sanctum
is reserved for the devout, but there was hardly a surface void of some deity or 'nother. As with so many things Indian, the temple was also part state museum.
Still had to take socks and shoes off to get in. Not so the former gatehouse, now given over largely to tailors, plying their trade facing a narrow aisle, with finished goods and bolts of cloth arrayed behind them in their stalls. Anchoring a corner farthest from the temple, looms Meenakshi Amman herself, pre-Vishnu, gaurding a kitchen-ware vendors stock.
at his winter digs near Little Lillies Creche. He's house-sitting for a British woman who helped start a community to support a pottery in the 90's. We visited first with Sabramahiam, the plains potter Kamachi's son. Son works in stoneware, much finer clay and much higher fire than the red pot clay of pops. The younger train
ed in Chanai (Madras) with the Meekers, an American couple. The magnificent trolly loading wood-fired kiln was built with the supervision and help of a West Coast (American) kiln Guru. Greenware
– dried but unfired pots – await the kiln. We had a lovely tea, Benjamin and I exchanged picture and video files of the Creche pageants, then returned to Kodaikanal to pack and dine with Ann and Bruce. Early the next day, we were off to the Madurai airport via the famous Sri Meenakshi Temple and a little shopping in the wedding center (tailors, kitchenware) in the old temple gateway, still surrounded by Hindu deities. The largest of many temple spires (52 meters) is right on the street. The Godess Meenakshi was born with three breasts, the center one melting away to fulfill prophecy when she married Vishnu. 
is reserved for the devout, but there was hardly a surface void of some deity or 'nother. As with so many things Indian, the temple was also part state museum. 
Still had to take socks and shoes off to get in. Not so the former gatehouse, now given over largely to tailors, plying their trade facing a narrow aisle, with finished goods and bolts of cloth arrayed behind them in their stalls. Anchoring a corner farthest from the temple, looms Meenakshi Amman herself, pre-Vishnu, gaurding a kitchen-ware vendors stock. 
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