Chennai

 This is Manjumatha our lady's basilica in Pallipuram,Vypeen.

Vypeen for those not familiar with central Kerala is longest island in India and stretches from Munambham which is mouth of Azeekal or old Muziris port .

In 1321 Vypeen was formed by a great flood which destroyed the famous Muziris port where ships from all over world had docked .

With the floods this dwindled in importance and Cochin rose to prominence as port .

Christianity existed in Kerala from 52 AD from when St Thomas direct disciple of Jesus Christ himself came to Muziris and spread Christianity.

This was long before the advent of Portugese in 16th century with thier brand of fanatic catholocism evangelism and forcible conversions .

By the time the Dutch overthrow the Portugese protestanism too came and later came the British .

The Portugese built series of forts and embankment in Vypeen to secure thier possessions.

The basilica cathedral too was built near pallipuram fort .

During Tipus invasion people feared his attacks on temples and churches and his religious persecution and many hid inside the church .

It's said the Portugese ships could not see the church from the sea as a misty fog covered it and was a miracle by mother Mary to protect her devotees .

The ships got asunder in fog and sudden cyclone and high tide destroyed many Portugese ships and they retreated .

Since then the church was called the church of our lady of snow .

Tipu beat a hast retreat ..

Now coming to our stay in Pallipuram for just 3 months in 1987 .

We looked after a hospital in the place .

During our stay we were invited by the church priest for the festival annual day lunch .

Every year many important people in the place was invited to church and we too were .

We did go too

Pictures from online thanks to all of you .

There was a funny part in it too .

The priest on inviting us had called us to come to Meda

Having come from Madras we weren't very sure about certain malayalam words and my association those days was only with my native place in north kerala during holidays and the colloquial language there was very different from that I'm Cochin and Vypeen .

Meda in Tamil was stage though in local language it was priests house in church .

So thinking I will be on stage I prepared a speech to the waiting millions and was disappointed when they just took me to sit in the dining hall for the feast .

Sitting next to me was local sub inspector of police Mr J ....I had been warned by my hospital owner Mr R ....a businessman that

SI .J had never been supportive of his hospital and spewed lies ,so I was wary ,SI J shook hands with me and immediately got to point ,he told me don't believe R fully he's known to have cheated many doctors of thier salaries after some time ,So Iam just giving you a caution advice ,I just smiled .

Strangely J was the good man and R the villain as he did just what J told after a few months luckily we had already planned to move to Cochin .

So all this happened in this church on that day