The chariot of the sun

The concept of a "long-weekend" isn't a creation of corporate America as the IT generation may have been duped to believe. It was pioneered long ago by the political parties in Bengal who regularly called for state-wide bandhs/hartaals on Fridays (or Mondays). The ever-malingering Bengali babu immediately (and consistently) kept giving his heartfelt support to the bandh irrespective of whether he was aligned with the idea behind it. The result; A sudden four-day vacation to the delight of Khokon, Poltu, Mamoni and the ginni culminating in a barrage of tantrums thrown at the hapless babu with requests for places to visit. Thus began the mini exodus to the coastal district of Puri, the land of the Jagannath and the Konark temples.

As a child I have had my share of Puri too. I have rushed in Bubblegummers to the beach at the break of dawn to witness the fishermen come ashore with their overnight haul, their boats silhouetted by the orange ball rising above the ocean bed. I have picked sea shells for hours with ma only to abandon them in her care as the sun beat harder on the sand. I have seen sand images of the gods and goddesses lying supine on the sand, courtesy the hands of an anonymous artist. I've had my tryst with the pandas (temple priests if you can call them so); and with those big round eyes of the idols from my father's shoulders. I have witnessed a real-life spiderman (clad only in loincloth) climbing to the top of the 220 feet Jagannath temple to change the flag on a moonlit night. Only a whip made of a stingray's tail; an ashtray made of buffalo horns, and a chariot-wheel cut in stone remain in dusty corners of my room as beacons of that coastal city.

So, when I landed in Puri in January 2012 fifteen years after my last visit, I found myself lost; in a sea of humanity. In the past decade Bengalis had apparently found better utilization of their long-weekends and increased geometrically (if not astronomically) in number. The city was struggling to hold its own under the constant trample of tourists (myself included). The vintage lodges, the sea-shore market place, the state emporiums, they were all there somewhere but hiding from this perennial onslaught of tourists. In search of old memories, the family decided to take a hike to the nearby town of Konark. I remembered the Sun Temple at Konark as a mammoth stone structure rising from the midst of a dust bowl; The intense heat in the summer months convincing the tourist of the omnipotence of the sun god. As a child I had likened its pyramidal roof and the ambient desert-like heat to the pyramids of Giza. I remembered the thousands of stone-carved elephants each in their unique postures gracing the lowest row of the temple's plinth. I remembered the stone cut horses (carefully put together by cast iron supports) frozen in their moment of elegance. The war elephants guarding the north face of the temple premise, each in an act of trampling the foe. Strangely, I did not remember the galore of erotic sculptures carved all along the plinth and the temple walls from those previous visits. It must have been a tough parental task to show the child only that which his age would understand and leave the rest for another time.

This time, it was a revelation. We arrived at Konark on a full moon night and decided to take a walk to the temple premise. My parents and I had seen the black pagoda before. For my wife it was her first. From a distance it looked like a gargantuan black beast, a shade darker than the night sky behind it. As we got nearer it awed me to think how it must have looked on a similar night a millennia ago, with only the moon as a source of light. In an era of the Burj Khalifa and the Petronas Towers it is difficult for an ancient stone temple to intimidate the onlooker by its mere size; But at the time it was built, it must have been larger in shape, size and splendour than anything the gentry would have known. It must have induced in them the awe that I still felt tonight, almost a thousand years later. We sat at its footstep for an hour soaking in the ambiance. My wife said she hadn't seen a thing like this before. In more ways than one it was my first too. 

The next day at daybreak we visited her again. The midnight rain had made the stone look darker and the surrounding greenery greener. I realized that the place was no more the arid patch I had seen years ago. Trees had been planted all around the temple complex. Every empty patch of land had been covered with carpet grass. There were well-trimmed hedges and flowering shrubs all around. My vivid memories of the local vendors hanging on to the clueless tourist did not find many takers. They had all been pushed a mile away from the temple premises. With a pang of nostalgia I remembered how one of them had vehemently argued that the replica (of the temple idol) he was trying to sell was made of granite stone. My father was sure it was just black paint over Plaster-of-Paris. We had bought the article eventually after much haggling but not before my father had etched a corner of it to prove his point. As we reached the temple, the intricacies of the carving and the tales etched in stone hit us hard. The day had revealed what the night had held back in her shroud. The chariot wheels, the dancing ladies, the pilgrims, the jaliwork all etched in sandstone and the towering life-size idols of Surya carved out of granite held me in obeisance. With so much to grasp and so little time at hand I wished for a keener eye and a more durable memory. Though never having chiseled stone, as an engineer I have had my share of carpentry and foundry work. It did not take much to salute the unknown hands that created this stone-chariot. If ever there was a sun god he would have been proud to own this one.              

With our manufactured long-weekend drawing to an end, the family headed back to civilization. As I was looking out at the landscape of Odisha that whizzed by the window of our train coach I wondered to myself; Why would a society want to sculpt the walls of a temple dedicated to the sun god with structures not just erotic (which is agreeable) but bordering on acts of immorality at best and bestiality at worst? Was carnal pleasure the ultimate truth then? Was there a different moral code that these people followed? Even with an extremely liberal mindset I failed to understand the motif of the carvings. Since then I have read a few theories but none convincing enough to justify the carving of a woman mating a dog on the walls of a temple dedicated (not to the god of lust, but) to the sun. My appreciation of the art however honest therefore remained incomplete without my understanding of the theme behind it. It was akin to wowing Picasso's Guernica without comprehending the thought that went into its creation.    

PS: Here is a link to the album from the trip. It may help the reader find interest in this majestic structure. 

https://plus.google.com/photos/106234093013796692906/albums/5696982446096125121?authkey=CLCRlMWCidmj2QE