Visit to Madurai

Over the last weekend I was off to Madurai along with couple of my colleagues to do a training at Thiyagarajar School of Management (TSM). TSM belongs to the illustrious Thyagarajar group of educational institutions in Madurai and I went to take a session on improving employability skills for their MBA second year students. TSM has wonderful infrastructure for an educational institution with well equipped library, computers with unlimited internt connectivity etc and all these in a very calm and serene surrounding.

MBA is totally different ball game where get great opportunities to build your knowledge, fine-tune your personality and equip yourself as a confident individual to face this world. Though they have good infrastructure, what I saw there is the lack of exposure of these students to current market practices. Probably, I guess many of the students study their MBA just like they did their graduation. Exactly this is the area we wanted to address and make them a wanted resource in the corporate world. We have got positive reviews, so I think the session was useful for the guys out there.

The other things I did in Madurai are the usual tourist stuff. I did go to Meenakshi Amman Temple and waited for 4 hours to complete the Darshan. The queue to enter the temple went like Hanuman tail extending for more than 1 km. We decided to patiently wait in the queue rather than hopping from Meenakshi Temple to some other temple. We did manage to enter the temple after 4 hours and had a darshan for 10 seconds!! But what caught my attention was the discipline exhibited by all the people where were in the queue. Not even one person tried to do any trick to byepass you on the queue and there was no noise, disruption or commotion. Patience is a great virtue and it was in abundance on that day. Only when the temple authorities played tricks by closing one gate and asking to take an extended route without proper entry, the crowd become little restive but overall it was fine.

When we started in the queue we never had any idea of how long we would take. After being there for 30-45 minutes we figured out that it is going to take more than 3 hours to complete the darshan. So we took turns to go and finish the breakfast while the other person continued to be in the queue. Standing in the queue, we end up talking to people standing near you whom you dont know at all. It was wonderful experience watching people, simply. Different people with varied emotions and reactions, it was worth the wait in the queue.
From Meenakshi Temple, we went straight to Pazhamuthircholai, (PZC) a place 20 kms from Madurai. This is one of the six abodes of Lord Murugan. The other 5 being, Tiruparankundram, Tiruchendur, Tiruttani, Swamimalai and Palani. PZC is just above the Alagar Koil, another famous temple on the Madurai circuit.

Couple of other things which happened during this visit worth mentioning here. For two days, I lived without TV or Internet. A great blessing!!