-Ellora Caves (11th Nov 2006)The bright sun turns pale in the evening and one can actually look at it and admire its perfect round shape and the vibrant orange color. The cool breeze of evening playfully moves my hair. All around me people are dressed in colorful dresses. Women are looking beautiful with their hair loaded with flowers with all possible colors and men have garlands around their neck. The air is filled with fresh air and the scent of fresh flowers forms an envelope around me. Every one is moving in slow motion towards a big cave. The climb to the cave was very steep but nobody seems to mind it. Everyone is eager to reach to the cave.
Everyone slows down in front of the cave and slowly humming the songs enter the cave carefully. Inside the cave, big idols of God are carved out of the hard rock. The idols seem so real that I was even afraid to touch them, what if I disturb their sleep and wake them up. Each idol depicts a story from the Vedas and hindu mythology. The vibrant colors decorating the huge idols on the walls of the cave matched the colors flowers decorated on the hair of various women moving slowly near me. It’s amazing how a craftsman can put life in a lifeless rock. A rocky wall which wasn’t existent till few years ago, starts dancing in front of my eyes.
Suddenly, the drums start playing and everyone looks at the temple situated right in the center. The temple has finer designs carved on the walls and it simply glows in front of me. The King emerges from the main temple and everyone welcomes him by shouting his name. The king is dressed in fine clothes and the setting sun’s last rays bless him. He lets the flowers in his hands blow away with air. The flowers dance for a while in the air and slowly reaching the earth below. People around me slowly start moving up stair case towards the temple. I follow the crowd and I reach a big hall. The hall has beautiful designs on its roof, pillars and floor. The vastness and yet the simplicity of the temple is simply amazing. The whole aura had put me in a trance. It felt like a force was pulling me inside. The shivling in the temple was huge. It was decorated with flowers and sweet smell of the incense filled the air. The priests were singing bhajans and their voice filled me with certain energy. Everything seemed so pure...so unreal.
Suddenly, I heard someone calling my name and I looked back and I saw Sonali standing. I looked at the shivling again and it was barren. The walls around me were bare and the idols were broken. The temple had no life in it. There were no flowers or incenses burning. There were no lights inside the temple and darkens inside the temple sadden me. I don’t know what I felt was a dream or had a lived a moment in the golden era of Indian history. When I came outside the sun was setting. Its last rays were dancing around a pillar that was standing tall. I started walking towards the exit and looked back one last time. It felt like a setting sun on the golden period of Indian history and are we responsible for it?
4 comments:
"I Love you Shalu"
"Raju loves Babli"
and many more things engraved on the stones, sometimes a heart and an arrow to go with it as well. This is what we do to our heritage sites if we have not converted them to urinals like the Mahakali caves in Jogeshwari or a lover's spot as the Portugese fort at Land's End Bandra. Check this out as well
The same story goes all around indian heritage sites .Its pathetic .some strict law can be enacted to prevent it coz it may take long time to enlighten the peoples mindset.
I think the story makes a relevance to all the heritage monumnts of the country!!
It's ironical how we promote these places of tourist interset across the world but forget to maintain the holiness and the beauty of such places..
It's painful how we ignore our heritage whereas ppl would travel from around the world just to catch the glimpse of these monuments!!
I Can Imagine if the scene u described here is a reality there would be a large no of ppl willing to visit and revisit the Golden History of India..
can someone explain me the sadistic pleasure ppl derive out of spoiling the beauty of such places, by adding on their not so good artistic skills, and carve out diffrent things like 'I LOVE U', or just a heart... i do not think anyone would like to travel a few thousand kilometers to see such scribbles at the monuments of historic significance...
can we expect such carvings at places like Statue of Liberty, or Collisiums of Rome?? No, then how can we very easily accept such things in our own country???
Kritika, I saw your entry on the dilbert blog. I think I am one of the people you talk to on the phone. Ha ha.
Sanjaya Malakar is a 17-year-old boy who is good enough as a singer that he made it to the final group on American Idol. He is now in the top 9 contestants. He is not the best singer, but he has great charm and personality and an offbeat sense of humor, so people keep voting for him to stay on the show. Check out www.americanidol.com to see how long he stays in the competition.
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