“Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.”

Albert Einstein.

I left Mamallapurum for Pondicherry, a former French colonial town a hundred miles south of Chennai. I clambered onto a state bus, but it was packed, so I scrambled off again, my backpack nearly disembowelling a female Chinese backpacker behind me as I did so.

I waited for the next bus, but a nearby cab driver convinced me to go with him instead. Actually, he was no cab driver, just an opportunist with a beat up old car. Nevertheless, I did it on the spur of the moment. Twenty minutes out of town, he stopped and got out, looking at the engine forlornly. I stayed in the car. I didn't know this guy - he could drive away with my bags if he wanted to. Then he started muttering into his mobile. The engine had simply overheated. He waited for it to cool down, then we started off again.

The journey went like this for a while - every twenty minutes or so we would stop and let the engine cool. Eventually we made it to a mechanic. The mechanic looked at the engine for a moment, then started tugging, tapping and unscrewing. He took a hammer and chisel to the engine block at one point, pulling away radiator pipes, air cooling tubes and anything he thought may be loose. He didn't once check the oil. However, I'm convinced he knew exactly what he was doing in his own haphazard way.

His apprentices were extremely amusing. He had two young lads working for him, and they wanted to look knowledgeable in front of an audience. Whenever the mechanic wasn't there they would come up and tap one of the loose pipes, or bow and listen to the silent engine as if it would whisper its ailment to them. Whenever the mechanic came back, he would brush them aside like annoying flies and they would try to give off an air of knowing kinship with him which simply didn't exist.

We eventually made it to Pondicherry even though the engine had not been fixed. As things turned out, the journey would be more eventful than the destination.

I walked out of the hotel into the midday sun. I'm not an Englishman, so make of that what you will. I strolled into town, gazing at the elm lined avenues, the run down colonial buildings and wonder upon wonders - a stretch of unbroken pavement.

Pondicherry (or Puducherry to give it it's new non-colonial name) originally grew up in the 2nd century as a Roman trading post with the Far East, but it was the French who really left their mark in the 18th century. Today the shuttered windows and leaning gables of the buildings, the central boulevard and the inescapable French street names leave testament to their colonisation, though personally I found little of the French flavour left. Although a fairly pleasant resort town, it had little to offer me. Even the ashram in Auroville which is world famous for its meditation, yoga and spiritual teachings held no attraction for me. Let's face it, I have a brain that won't switch off, if I want to put my legs behind my head I'll jump off a cliff and there is nothing anybody can teach me about spirits.

As I strolled down the Promenade watching Indian families sit and chat on the thin stretch of red sand, I did feel relaxed. The waters from the Bay of Bengal can be quite rough and the waves crashing on the black, rocky beach helped me to ignore the omnipresent hawkers with their maps and bongos. A large statue of Mahatma Ghandi cheered me too. I don't have heroes, but the Mahatma comes pretty damn close - who else could have dreamed that the British ruling class were so used to beating the recalcitrant common man that they had no stomach to hit people who would not retaliate?

Ghandi’s statue.

The Bay of Bengal: and a really precious commodity in India: a public litter bin.

The next day I was feeling lazy, so I hired a taxi to take me to Kumbakonam, around sixty miles South of Pondicherry, for 1100 rupees. This is like hiring a taxi to take you from Central London to Peterborough for £15. The journey opened my eyes to rural life in India. Here, from the comfort of an air conditioned taxi, I could see the real poor of India, uneducated children working in the field, grizzled beggars with gaunt cheeks, missing appendages and milky eyes, squalid huts lining the roadside with palm fronds bedecking the roof and fires burning inside. And yet even in this poverty, there was a real palpable sense of community. It was a four hour drive down some horrendous roads and we stopped a few times along the way, and the local people went about their daily lives, chatting, joking and enjoying each other’s company. This only reaffirmed my belief that life is about what you do and who you are, not what you own. For instance, all I currently own is a beaten up backpack, some meagre clothes and a huge bank vault filled with bank bonuses, blood diamonds and Nazi gold.

Kumbakonam is not on the usual tourist trail. It's a standard Indian working town which contains the central business district for the region. However, it also has a number of temples; some old, some not so old. I decided to go there on impulse to get off the tourist trail and I'm glad I did. I checked into the Hotel Chela listed in my 2002 guidebook as being bright and clean, but it was now tired and worn. It was only £10 for the night though, so it was as good a place as any to get my head down.

Next day I headed straight for the eight hundred year old Sarangapani Temple which I had singled out as I was on a tight schedule. Approaching it is impressive. A large gopura tower (entrance gateway) shields the temple from prying eyes. The gopura is decorated with hundreds of statues of various gods in different forms, all painted in bright kingfisher colours. The temples of Tamil Nadu are distinct from those in the rest of the country - as are the people who originally populated it, the Dravidians, who first arrived in southern India six thousand years ago. Nobody is sure quite where they came from, but their language and architecture was quite distinct.

I removed my shoes at the entrance as is custom, and paced reverently through the gates. This is a working temple and I did feel slightly like a gatecrasher at a party. The outer halls were painted with bright and vibrant murals and old religious artefacts lined the aisle which led deeper into the temple. As I reached the entrance to the inner enclosure, an official looking man in a white robe waved me away, whispering, "Not allowed."

I had no problem with this - I was only a visitor here after all.

I wandered in the direction the cleric had waved me and headed out into the enclosed yard surrounding the temple. It was quite peaceful here and afforded an amazing view of the complex.

The yard led me back into the temple on the opposite side to where I had walked out. Here stood the man who had barred my entry.

"Not allowed," he repeated as I made my way to leave.

"I understand - I'm completely respectful of your customs," I replied, feeling slightly sheepish.

Then he muttered something low under his breath and surreptitiously waved for me to follow him. I didn't like this at all - especially if I was right about what he had just whispered - "A hundred rupees."

I quietly left the building.

I wandered around outside mulling over what had just happened. It didn't seem right. I pulled out my phone to call my friend Sairama and ask his advice, but a tall, portly policeman interrupted me by staring at my phone. I had met him earlier walking down the street and he had given me directions.

I asked him if it was usual for clerics to ask for donations inside the temple. At this point, another plainly dressed man turned up and the cop said a few words to him after which they both laughed. I took this as a bad sign - their body language indicated they were laughing at my naivety.

I said my farewells and started to walk back to the hotel.

As I was walking, something clicked in my head. I was going to miss seeing the inside of this beautiful old temple - something I had travelled many miles for - because someone was trying to scam me for a few rupees. And how dare that man charge somebody to enter a holy place. What a vile thing to do. Fuck it - I was going to find the little shit and show him up for the sacrilegious little thief he was. I turned on my heels and strode back to the temple. All thought left my head except for my newfound purpose. I was going to find him, stare him in the eye and confront him. I didn't know exactly what I was going to say, but I was confident that the right words would come at the right time.

I walked purposely back into the outer hall full of fire in my belly. There at the entrance to the inner courtyard where the trickster had stood was a small, kindly looking old man dressed in official robes. My thief was nowhere to be seen. The old man didn't even glance as I walked into the inner enclosure. My fraudulent cleric had obviously fled when he saw me leave thinking I was going to find the real cleric.

Inside, I didn't enter the shrine itself - a walled vault within the enclosure - as I didn’t want to barge in and intrude like an ignorant, wide-eyed tourist. The shrine of any temple is generally considered a private space for Hindus only.

The enclosure harboured beautiful ink-black sculptures of Vishnu, who the temple is dedicated to, and his various incarnations lined the outer walls. The temple possessed a strange mystical quality that is born of its architecture and of the hundreds of years of reverence shown to the place. In one corner, carved colonnades of dark wood held up a roof that systematically allowed the sun to shine through at regular intervals in almost solid beams of light. Reliefs of horses and elephants adorned the walls of the inner shrine. The air smelled musty and sweet; damp and incense harmonising in the air. The sense of calm was powerful, immediately washing away all my annoyances. This building held a certain power in its unique architecture and for me possessed an emotional resonance that I was to find in no other temple.

I left Kumbakonam feeling very happy; the town had been good to me. There were no hawkers or beggars and the people were disarmingly friendly. Apart from that one blip in the temple, I had found a place that I would definitely visit again if I was in the region.

As I made my way to the bus stand, it started raining. I trudged the muddying streets burdened with the weight of my backpack. A teenager caught sight of me and immediately got on his mobile phone to his friends. Then he started following me. I knew this because I double backed a couple of times trying to find the right direction, and he was still on my tail, talking all the while. This can be disconcerting the first time it happens, but it occurs quite often in smaller towns where tourists are infrequent. A certain excitement is stirred up by the sighting of a foreigner. People will ask for their picture to be taken with you. It's actually quite endearing. However, there is a scam operating in some the larger  cities where people will surround you to have a photograph taken and pick your pocket while doing so.

Eventually I found the bus which was packed, plonked myself in the last available seat in the middle of the back row and watched while paddy fields and rickety villages sped by at the speed of light. Travelling on a state bus in the back seat is not a wise move. As it thunders over holes in the road, you are literally thrown into the air, and your rear end pays a heavy toll. But I still had lots of things to ponder as I travelled.

My old friend Mr. Anger had popped in to visit me again after only two days. And in hindsight, the whole incident seemed exaggerated. Okay, so the guy had tried to scam me out of a small sum of money - in a temple no less - but did it really deserve the kind of anger I only reserve for when I see a real injustice being done? I knew the answer was no, but still couldn't work out why anger was plaguing me. Was it culture shock still lingering in the back of my mind after two weeks, making me feel vulnerable and defensive? Perhaps. Was encroaching middle age finally catching up with me? Never! And then it hit me like a gut punch from a heavyweight boxer. The last time I had been this consistently angry was twenty five years ago when my dad died. It's one of the inescapable stages of grief. It's hard enough losing someone you love, but the feeling of powerlessness it leaves with you invokes anger on a grand scale. You rage against a universe that allows us the freedom and exquisite beauty of self awareness and at the same time the bitter realisation that everyone we know and love will one day die. And there is nothing any of us can do about it. In that sense, anger is justified and I know it will rumble on for a good while to come. But at least I know what is at the core of my mood swings.

The bus jolted me out of my reverie. As we rolled into Thanjavur, I caught sight of the main temple in the distance and my jaw dropped.

It was huge!

It was beautiful!

Again, it was huge!

Did I mention its size?

I incarcerated myself in a quality business hotel and slept soundly, knowing that my temple visit the next day would be something quite special, but not knowing that it would eventually lead me to question the very nature of reality itself.

(Now that's a cliffhanger!)