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Warm greetings from this wonderful and absolutely great place, another dream called Mamallapuram, or better known as Mahabalipuram. Strangely no one ever told me what a wonder lies 50 km down south from Chennai. And the only hints seeping in me came from the guide books Neerja is carrying along.

Mamallapuram, the district derives it's name from 'Mamalla' the wrestler king Narsimha Varman, whose contribution is immense and much evident in architecture and sculpture here. I also loved the warm Sun, walking (I am always madly in love with walking) and ofcourse after chilling cold of Le Meredien, this warm environment is all the more welcoming. I also love the food here, in stark contrast to continental food at Le Meredien.

The best is, the Shore Temple ofcourse. It looks like melted ice to me, in contrast to other elements of nature with sharp features. The temple facing the sea, houses the Shiva lingam, and the one behind it, has a reclining Vishnu. This is indeed in ruins, and is ravaged by ocean waves, Sun and ofcourse the strong winds. Therefore a stone wall has been erected to prevent the erosion.

Carvings and sculpture here are not that discreet mostly because of erosion but the aura is no doubt very captivating. I felt like I am entering a temple structure of mud/ sand and it may collapse any moment - I had to tap at the stone to see that it is not that fragile and has stood the tests of time since hundreds of years and years indeed.

The Sculpture museum here is also worth visiting atleast, and I did notice some sculptures depicting very extreme negative emotions, like one with a man standing on a child and crushing a woman with another foot. Another one had a head of someone, with blood dripping down. But it does not mean that this is all what is in this museum rather it is full of various postures of Ganesha and a lot of other idols too.

The city of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram, is full of sculpture workshops all around and many artisans thrive on this art here. This is a positive feel I will carry back home.

The Five Rathas are also great. These used to be actually taken out on cartwheels but now are stationary shrines. The first Ratha is dedicated to Draupadi, and the remaining three to Dharmaraja, Bheema and Arjuna. There is also a massive (not that massive, but bigger than real life size) statue of Nandi too.

There are many other temples and caves in this region and the use of stone, sculpture and ofcourse, themes, have been predominant in most of them.

Ganesha Mandapam, stood out strikingly because Ganesha had a DHOTI !!!

Arjuna Penance, is a huge rock piece, with one of the most explicit carvings, but WRONGLY named!!! I never knew it today when we visited it and therefore tomorrow we shall go back again and try to relate to it better!

All the sculptures here on this big rock are dedicated to the historical event when Bhagiratha meditated and Ganga flowed down to Earth. In the middle of the rock, there is still a crevice for Ganga to flow through. (There is no water flowing when we had been there today but there is a mechanism to make some water flow). The sculpture here, especially in it's entirety and thematic relevance, is just spell binding.

The highlights were the rocks and caves near the Krishna Makkan Ball (which is a ball of stone bigger than an elephant!). It was just wonderful to be there on these rocks, may be because of the evening setting Sun and the backdrop of dense plantations.

Tomorrow we shall positively go to the Shore Temple and Arjuna's Penance, and try to hear the sound of the sculpture more clearly. The temples, want to say something, the ruins, often have their own subtle way of sharing their sordid sagas.

I did notice some shady things here, especially indicating higher drug use. Not only I saw some real life shots of people trying to secure drugs but also saw many wooden pipes - a prototype of which is used by Barabanki Narcotic users. I did asked the shop owner and he told me it is for smoking ganja - great! This is India, I love my India!
Yeh duniya, ek dulhan, yeh mathe ki bindiya - this is India .

Tomorrow in all probabilities, we may move to Pondicherry, and I really look forward to this great center of varied interests. Aurobindo Ashram, will no doubt interest us besides Aurobindo Auroville handicrafts and sculptures/ architecture in this Union Territory. Pondicherry should be bigger definitely being a state capital! I had always wanted to go to this city atleast, and now the time has come! Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram has set the pace too 

It is strange and remarkable that no one ever told me how wonderful Mamallapuram can be. This also says volumes how distant and dissociated we are becoming from our own cultural and historical heritage. May be, we all are too blinded to see the real worth of our own home. Something has dazzled our eyes and we are just not able to see the great timeless wealth in our own lap rather are just absorbed totally in the wonders of hallucination induced by someone else. Kuch Gadbad hai

In Chennai too, a visit to State Museum, is sooooo important and eye-opening, and I regret I could not do it before! Because I never knew this before! Chennai museum is a must visit not only for sculpture, but contemporary art paintings, and bronze artifacts will just amaze you!

And NATARAJAs! I saw so many of them all over! And surprisingly never before I knew what actually nataraja posture stands for! I read it in a book and I love it more now! It is strange that I just no longer want any nataraja. Not even if I can get one. This is in stark contrast to the times I really craved to POSSESS one. Possession, has crumbled to dust long before, and gave way to an ocean of appreciation and sharing perhaps.

Ye paththaron ke bich mein.
Mein aaj aa gaya hun
Dastaan sadiyon purani
Mein aaj sun raha hun

Yaki to nahi par ek bhram to hai shayad,
Diwaron ko bolte hue dekha hai
Patharon ko kuch kehte hue dekha hai
Hawaon ko bate karte dekha hai
Lehron ko kehte-sunte dekha hai
Kuch aisa lagta hai, ki
Maine inhe pehle kahin dekha hai
In patharaon ke bich mein
Mein pehle bhi kabhi aaya hun
Dastaan sadiyon purani
Mein kahin aur bhi sun chukka hun

Yaad to aata nahi, par ek bhram hai shayad
Suni padi chaukhat par, hui dastak hai shayad

Living Artistry: Mamallapuram
Neerja Vasishta

Neerja Vasishta, is presently on a Rotarian Ambassadorial Fellowship for the year 2001-02 studying regional development and city planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She hails from New Mexico, USA, and had an impressive inning in art promotion at Nicarguan Cultural Association. Neerja is also visiting many grassroot organizations in India during her stay. She doubtlessly has a great ability to capture the life of a given situation on a piece of paper and her deep underlying current of artistic inclinations have inspired a delineation of Mahabalipuram. Neerja is currently on a tour visiting Chennai, Pondicherry, Chidambaram, Thanjavur, Tumbakonam, Trichy, Madurai, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari, Trivendrum, Kochi, Mangaloer, Coimbatore and Bangalore. We hope to publish more such reports of their impressions of the Dravidian splendor!

We succeeded in leaving the city of Chennai after a few failed attempts at finding the correct place from which our bus should leave. The profusion of local, state, interstate, and national private busses added to our confusion, but after asking several people and wandering down several busy streets, we found the general place we needed to be at. One of the many children working as vendors in the bus station caught our attention as she yelled out to us: "Mamallapuram? C'mon!" so that we had no choice but to heed her backwards glance and hand motion to quickly follow her. With a bundle of single serving water bags balanced on her head, the barefooted youth looked about eight or nine years old and her dusty hair hung in a tangled maze down her back, almost blending into her old green shirt and skirt. We followed her as she wove though the jostling crowd and brought us to the other side of the bus station. "Mamallapuram. This bus." We boarded the bus, arranged our bags on the racks above, and gave her ten rupees for her help. She pocketed the money and went on her way trying to sell her water and lighten the load she bore atop her head.

Within five minutes our bus rambled out of the station and down Chennai's busy streets. With the day's diesel fumes baking under the setting sun, and more vehicles joining the crowds, escape out of the city was welcome. An hour and a half later, we had passed out of Chennai's outskirts traveling south along the coast of the Bay of Bengal to the town of Mamallapuram where the famous shore temple and sculptures of the Pallava era awaited us.

The town where the bus left us reminded me of the laid-back beach towns along the coasts of Mexico, which usually catered to foreign and some domestic tourists. In this town of only 13,000, an annual dance festival attracts hundreds of visitors, and shops with goods from all over India line the paths tourists take to and from points of interest.

Some owners are from local areas and have taken up sculpture or started small shops selling books, cigarettes, film, and crafts from various parts of India. Some have opened charming and simple guesthouses to provide visitors with shelter. One evening, while window-shopping, we met a man who had moved from Kashmir only a week before. Once at the northernmost state of India, he now found himself in the most southernmost state. In a country as diverse as India, it is the equivalent of moving to a distant land, and it was evident from his manner that he spent many hours thinking of the familiar music, breeze of the sky, and soil of his homeland as he tried to accustom himself to unfamiliar territory.

Early in the morning, the sounds of machines and manual tools striking stone continue throughout the day in a manner such that it was next to impossible to forget the town's past and why today it attracts visitors: sculpture and sculptors. The first place we visited was the Shore Temple, which is the most famous or well known of the works found in Mamallapuram. My first impression of the Shore Temple was that it was a miniature temple made of wet sand, which had been left by a fickle creator to fend for itself on a beach somewhere. However, this structure was on a grand scale and it had survived hundreds of tides and years' battering from the sun, ocean winds, and monsoons, leaving it with a warm, melted appearance. Its exterior is still covered with sculpture that I imagine once consisted of sharp angles and shadows of repetitive geometric shapes. Now, one must strain to decipher the figures that have receded into the main architectural structure. At times the most one can make out is a head or body, but many times specific gods, animals, and symbols can be identified.

If the exterior of the temple has been softly worn down, the preserved interiors serve as a marked contrast. Under two spires of the temple exist shrines to Shiva. These quiet and private sanctuaries give the feeling of personal and timeless religiosity due to the mix of ancient stone, the roar of endless ocean waves a few hundred feet away, and the weathering of the temple. At the same time, loving Nandis surround the courtyard of the shore temple, making it more accessible to the mortals of the earth: kids "ride" the cows and adults find it hard to resist petting the stone figures.

My favorite shrine is not in devotion to Shiva. A nondescript door opens into a small dark rectangular room. Once your eyes adjust, the viewer sees the sweet figure of Vishnu reclining. He is at least seven or eight feet tall and looks somewhat like a small giant in stature. However, his body is sculpted smoothly and tenderly so that one feels that one is merely watching someone they love sleeping peacefully. A flower and a few rupees that had been placed on Vishnu's chest remind me of a father whose children have mischievously placed their toys on his chest as he lies in a deep slumber. I almost want to watch and see what Vishnu will do when he wakes up and shakes these things off of his body.

Many more sculptures abound in the town. A guidebook can list all the things to see, the significance and dates of the sculptures, but only you yourself can feel the effect of seeing such remarkable artistry. From what ordinarily would have been a plain rock face emerges tens of gods and devotees, their weight defying gravity and body positioning shaping patterns from the sun. A meditative pose of a guru is caught in time, as are the delicate curves of a family of elephants that almost look as if they are still breathing. Sinewy snake-men-gods raise apprehension in the viewer, and the gratitude of a village is felt as Krishna saves them from the wrath of Indra (lifting Govardhan on His little finger).

At every turn stories and symbols play themselves out, changing and having their own meaning for each viewer. A visitor is left with a feeling of fortune for having been able to see something from history which endures and stays strong despite the ravaging winds not only of nature, but of humanity's own fickle nature. The love and devotion with which the sculptors used to execute these precious works of art is not only evident today, but also continues through the response which they evoke from their descendents and viewers from all over the world.

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