World Tamil Conference

After days of discussion, Jana, Vijay, Balaji, Balaji's Tirupur friend and I went to CODISSIA for the World Tamil Conference, afternoon after having lunch. As planned, we first went to CIT to see those 40 floats of tabeaux (இனியவை நாற்பது). Whereever we saw, there were people's heads - almost all belonged to villagers of southern districts of Tamil Nadu.

I witnessed an old Gandhian who stood amidst policemen, talking Gandhian principles and policemen laughing silently. I didn't miss to click a picture, getting closer to them.

When we were seeing those floats, Vijay was trying to photograph the flying aeroplane in the sky, in different angles. I went to him and said, "தம்பி, இருக்கறத விட்டுட்டு பறக்கறத புடிக்காத."

Not more than five floats did we see, Balaji, Vijay and Jana were in a hurry to see something, they got me out of CIT promissing me that we'll return afterwards.

Later I found that their reason for hastiness was to see nothing but the shining baldness of the old man - Karunanidhi. That's when I realised why Prem and Nithin refused to come to the conference - they preferred to see the shining baldess in the TV itself. MP Raja was giving speech in the mega screen outside the big dias which consisted of Home Minister Chidambaram, CM Karunanidhi among others. Balaji's Tirupur friend and I got irritated by these three idiots who went into the maze of queues towards the dias, which just lead to the outside, half way through.

Instead of going to the CIT, they took me to the food stall where Vijay and Jana lied on the carpet and snored well hugging each other, while I was hearing the juicy love stories of Balaji and his friend's. At last in the evening without visiting the floats or anything, we came walking more than one hour to the bus stop slowly because of the huge crowd. That is when I witnessed more than 40 cars (SUVs) belonging to ministers passed quickly; securities with guns hanging on the side of the vehicles like what we see in films. I threatened Balaji to come another day to see all those floats.

Another day:
Few days after the conference ended, Balaji, Gopi, Naveen and I came to CODISSIA. This time I saw many Coimbatoreans unlike before. We headed straight to see the floats at CODISSIA where policemen were dutifuly sleeping in chair amidst the crowd. CIT ground had lot of space to accommodate 40 floats but they moved all to the small ground of CODISSIA, making mess.

The climate was good - cloudly; but was not suitable for photography. It was difficult to take pictures in the small crowded area without people's heads; and with worst background - dull climate, the buildings and wires and lights criss-crossing. But I somehow managed...

For the first time we visited ISKCON temple which was near CODISSIA. We saw a guy sitting on a stand far inside the temple. We said that was a realistic statue but Balaji refused it as a holy man he had seen in TV and asked me how I say... I said to him, "When I clicked a picture at him, he didn't come running after me, as cameras are prohibited inside the temple." Then he believed. Later we found out it was a wax statue of Swami Srila Prabhupad.

That day was a special occasion. So they asked us to sing slogas along with them. It was quite cool to sing publicly. The guys there gave a small spiritual lecture about soul. Those pandits didn't pronounce tamil words properly, perhaps the influence of sanskrit...

By the time we came out, these three guys became bakthimaan. Naveen bought a Bhagavath Geetha book. Gopi was jumping from ground to sky of hunger. There was a grass land opposite to the temple with 108 stones embedded around a pole with a very small Krishna idol on its top. Once we learnt that one has to say "hare krishna hare rama..." sloga while stepping on each of the stones, Gopi forgot about hunger and jumped first on the stones and we all followed. And for my part, I bought prasadham for my home (as expected my parents got surprised, as they believed I am an atheist).

Later we returned out to our home from the peaceful temple.

Below are the photos I clicked using (as usual) டுபாகூர் mobile cam. And our beautiful faces [ ;) ] can be seen in my Orkut profile, for other photos of us together.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/50405571@N06/sets/72157624374749321/detail/