Four settlements in a thorn wood, once too dangerous to cross. Within two lifetimes: a railway junction, a national research laboratory, a university, and two of the fourteen banks India would one day nationalise.
This site is the record of how that happened — and of the town doing business here now.
மெய்ப்பொருள் காண்பது அறிவு
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Karaikudi is the largest town of the Chettinad region, in Sivagangai district. Its name comes from karai, the thorny plant of this dry country, and kudi, a settlement.
The Nagarathars who settled here did not merely trade. They financed half the Indian Ocean from eighty-odd villages, and then spent the proceeds on three things: temples, houses, and schools. That is why a semi-arid taluk with no river and no industry holds a university, a national research institute and some of the most extraordinary domestic architecture in India.
This site is an attempt to record all of it properly — and to show what Karaikudi is worth to anyone doing business here now.
Temple calendar
Chithirai–Vaikasi · Apr–May
The town’s own festival, for the town’s own deity. Ten days from the last Tuesday of Chithirai, ending with the chariot — and, almost uniquely, with the deity from the sanctum itself brought out for it.
Masi–Panguni · Feb–Mar
Pots of milk, fire pots, kavadi and a walk across the bed of fire — for a small temple whose story, of a girl who came here with smallpox and began to foretell, is barely a lifetime old.
Masi · Feb–Mar
The grand night in honour of Lord Siva, kept awake until dawn at the temple of 1872 in the southwest of the town — the one Karaikudi calls the Nagara Sivan Kovil.
Thai · 14–17 January
Four days of harvest, kept by everyone and tied to no single deity — the rice boiled in a new pot until it rises over the rim, and the household calls out pongalo pongal.
Aavani · Aug–Sep
Ten days at the rock-cut temple twelve kilometres from town, where a six-foot Ganesha was carved out of a hillside by a sculptor who signed his work — around the fourth century.
Karthigai · Nov–Dec
The oldest festival still kept in the Tamil country, and the simplest: rows of clay lamps along the threshold and the courtyard edge, left to burn down. A Chettinad house is built for it.
நமசிவாயம் நமசிவாயம்
நல்ல மழை பெய்ய வேணும்
நமசிவாயம்