Thirubuvanam Silk Weaving

A tiffin centre about 200 metres south of the temple. Tiffin means the South Indian short-meal repertoire — idli, dosai, pongal, vadai — served morning and again in the evening, with the middle of the day often quiet.

A tea counter at the eastern end of the village, out where the banks and the post office are rather than by the temple. This is the kind of shop the street runs on — tea, coffee and whatever short eats are on the rack that morning — and it is the nearest thing to a cafe in Thirubuvanam. Hours are nobody's published timetable; it opens early and shuts when the trade stops.

A mess on the southern street, a few doors from the tiffin centre. A mess in Tamil Nadu is a plain working eating house that serves a set meal at lunch rather than a menu — you get what is cooked that day. It is the most likely place in Thirubuvanam to find a full midday meal.

An Amman temple at the western end of the village, roughly 700 metres from the Chola temple and the furthest of the village shrines on that side. Amman temples are the village goddess tradition — older in practice than the royal stone temples and quite separate from them, run by the locality rather than by a devasthanam.

A small Anjaneyar — Hanuman — shrine about 200 metres north of the great temple. Vayumoolai names the northwest corner, the quarter of Vayu, the wind god who is Hanuman's father, so the name is really a direction. A neighbourhood shrine kept by the street around it rather than a visitor site; look in as you pass.

A nandavanam is the flower garden a temple keeps to grow its own offerings — jasmine, nerium, tulsi — rather than a public park, and this is the southern of the two mapped beside the Kampahareswarar temple, immediately behind the compound wall. It is working ground belonging to the temple; look over the wall rather than walk in.

The second of the temple's two flower gardens, on the northern side of the Kampahareswarar compound and about 50 metres from the sanctum. Between them the two gardens are why the temple's daily garlands do not have to be bought in — the same arrangement most large Tamil temples once had and few still keep.

A Vinayakar shrine on the western side of the village, about 600 metres from the great temple. Bala Vinayakar is Ganesha as a child. Like most of the small temples in these streets it is a neighbourhood shrine with its own local following and no published opening hours — the door is open when someone has opened it.

A Mariyamman temple on the northeastern side of the village. Mariyamman is the goddess of rain and of the diseases that come with the heat, and her temples are busiest through Aadi, the Tamil month roughly mid-July to mid-August, when the village festivals fall. Outside that it is a quiet street shrine.

A Vinayagar shrine on the northern edge of the village, about 270 metres from the great temple. Ganesha shrines sit at entrances and corners by design — you pass them on the way in rather than make a trip to them — and this is one of several in Thirubuvanam's streets.

A second Vinayagar shrine, this one about 200 metres northwest of the Chola temple and close enough to fold into the same walk. Karpagam refers to the wish-granting tree of the epics, so the name reads roughly as the Ganesha who gives what is asked. A working neighbourhood shrine.

A tank on the western side of Thirubuvanam, about 600 metres from the temple and the larger of the two the village keeps. Kulam is Tamil for tank; the delta's villages sit in a net of them, filled by the northeast monsoon between October and December and drawn down through the dry months. No visitor path, no railing — a working tank in a working village.

A Perumal — Vishnu — temple recorded about 2 km east of Thirubuvanam, the only Vaishnava shrine on the village's own list among a run of Shiva and Amman temples.

An Angala Parameshwari temple about 1. 5 km east of the village centre, out past the banks on the Mayiladuthurai side. Angala Parameshwari is a fierce form of the goddess with a strong following across the delta and her own festival cycle, usually in the Tamil month of Panguni.

A kulam — a village tank — on the southwestern edge of Thirubuvanam, about a kilometre from the temple. Delta villages are built around tanks like this one: they hold the monsoon, feed the wells and the fields, and drop through the dry months. There is no path built round it and nothing laid on for visitors; it is a working water body in a working village.

Silk shop. Sannathi Street, Thirubhuvanam 612 103, Thiruvidaimarudur taluk, Thanjavur district.

A hot-chips counter on the southern street, about 250 metres from the temple. Hot chips shops fry to order through the day — banana, tapioca, potato — and sell by weight; in a village with no restaurant to speak of this is the practical thing to carry away. Unverified hours.