Beyond Khajuraho's Kama Sutra

July in Khajuraho

It finally arrived from the frame shop last week, a memory sealed within a 2" thick brown wood border. Today it hangs proudly in the front room, the amateurish stroke mistaken for mine by ignorant, visiting neighbours, who loose interest when I tell them it's tribal Gond Art from Madhya Pradesh. To them, it is inexpert colour, to me a small part of a beautiful memory.

Travel finds

Nine months have passed since that trip to Bundelkhand. The hills were unsafe after the floods they said, so towards the plains we (Gowri & I) moved. The trip was a special one,

because it was going to be our last before I shifted cities. We had learnt our lesson from our previous train travel, so this time around we traveled in style in the air conditioned coach. Its a 10-odd hour trip, and the next morning we woke up to the sight of lush green hills and endless plains.

In 'boar'ing company 

Our accommodation chosen after carefully reading the reviews on boooking.com was basic. We checked in, freshened up and set off to explore the temple town. Gowri wanted to travel by bike, but I wasn't very confident about staying on it, so we walked. The main temple cluster is on the Western side, and there are a few others on the Eastern and Southern parts. Of course if you travel in July, like we did, chances are that you wouldn't want to spend any more time than you absolutely have to, out in the sun.

The main tour begins at this gigantic 9-ft Varaha or boar temple - the third avatar of Vishnu. Carved out of a single stone, this beauty has 675 miniature figures carved on it, depicting the Gods of the Hindu pantheon. Though it was magnificent, we were dying to see the erotic sculptures. After all wasn't that what Khajuraho was all about? How wrong we were!

At the Lakshmana Temple, we caught sight of the first erotic carvings. The temple, had on its outer wall carvings that depicted all walks of life - a wedding procession, a war march, a musical setting, and among other things sex.

All kinds of it - couples, orgies, homosexual encounters... one look at the carvings and you'll know that there was a time, (between 950 and 1050 AD to be precise) when sex was spoken, written, carved and probably practiced with gay abandon, and therefore allowed on 'sacred' temple walls.

Lakshmana Temple

And here we are today, on the threshold of change and development, rewriting laws to make same sex marriages a criminal offence or imposing strict moral codes on ourselves based on gender, religion and community. I am going a little off track and sounding like an old tape recorder. Back to Khajuraho then.

After shower

Though sex is depicted on some temple walls, to brand Khajuraho as a Kama Sutra haven would be a crime. This temple town is an architectural masterpiece, each structure designed keeping in mind vastu rules and mythological specifications. The one dedicated to the Sun God faces the East, the one for Shiva has a smaller temple on the opposite side dedicated to Nandi. The 'garbhagraha' or the sanctum sanctorum has circular or square shaped roof depending on the deity in question.

And the carvings.. my oh my.. the art work on each of these temples will blow your mind away! One work particularly caught my fancy. A woman is in a state of undress and the artist has captured the fall of her garment and the curve of her back as she stretches. The Kandariya Mahadev temple was like a poetry cast in stone. At 102-ft, the magnitude of its construction was visible in the recurring patterns and designs on sandstone. It was a bright sunny day, so after nearly four hours of heat and sweat and sun burn, we decided to call it a day.

Our plan was to explore the surrounding areas on day two. So off we went in a hired auto, past the temple town and the airport, in the direction of Panna National Park. As we left the main town behind, the landscape changed. Concrete houses made way for mud tiled ones and soon the thatched roof kind. Then even those vanished, and it was just us on the road, with dry, empty fields on either sides and an occasional grazing buffalo.

I could see that life in Khajuraho is not easy. Connectivity is a grave problem and so is education and development. For years now, strong voices of dissent has risen from Bundelkhand, seeking more funds and possibly a separate state. Post Telangana these voices have only grown louder. The auto stuttered on, and about 20-minutes later, a crowded bus precariously balancing its passengers and their possession on its roof, passed us in the opposite direction. I had seen something like this in the Fevicol advertisement, and had laughed at what I presumed was exaggeration.

Village scene

Now that the bus was gone, the road seemed endless and lonely and the two of us were worried for our own safety. According to the driver, we had traveled half way, but we decided to double back. Call us paranoid or call us cautious, but the loss of a few hundred rupees and half a day was a small price to pay for peace of mind, and probably safety.

Dots & Dashes

When the auto fellow dropped us off near the temple, I noticed a small shop where a man sat painting. Dilip Singh specialises in Gond and Rajasthani style of art, and was at that point working on a commissioned piece for a resort - colourful fishes on a yellow background painted using dots and dashes.

How we befriended him and convinced him to part with his painting is the second part of this story. In that post, I'll also included stories of our adventures across Chhatarpur district, at the often ignored Bhimkund and the pilgrimage site of Jatashakar.

Shiva & Nandi temples

Kandariya Mahadev Temple

A Birthday memoir on April Fool's

Prank? Joke?

Today is the 1^st of April, a day reserved for pranksters. When I was a younger, I used to try really hard to come up with a good April Fool's Day trick. But who was I kidding? I don’t have a single funny bone in my being, and jokes never come easy to me. But in my class was this other girl, a sorta tomboy character who enjoyed reading Hardy Boys rather than Nancy Drew and preferred basketball and other sweaty sports to staying indoors. Thressy had a sense of humour to match her April 1^st birthday.

Kainady farmhouse at Thamarassery

But I’m a November born. Every year, I pretend that I don't care about my birthday. What is all this fuss about, I keep saying. Secretly hoping that I’d be spoilt rotten, by the people I love. So when my best buddies called to cancel their birthday visit plan, I sensed a conspiracy - a surprise maybe, and so I waited. 

That day, I was up early, but when the doorbell stayed silent well past the expected hour, reality sunk in. The excuses were genuine and the cancellation for real. To cheer me up, my husband suggested we stick to our original plan of visiting Thressy at her farmhouse.

One for love

Thamarassery, is a slow little town on the foothills of Wayanad, and as we left the main market place and drove further up, the landscape changed from beautiful to magnificent. A case of mistaken identity and a small detour later, we arrived at the plantation. Thressy was at the gate to usher us in, and on the dining table awaiting my arrival was this pretty little cake that her mother had baked. It was decorated with fresh flowers from the garden, and when I closed my eyes to make a wish, I knew it was going to be a good day after all.

Cake and lunch later, we set out for a walk. The estate was set up by her grandfather and his uncle in the 1940's. When they first decided to start their plantation here, in the rugged and mountainous region, they were faced with the task of taming the wild undergrowth and surviving the unknown. I imagined their struggles must have been similar to those undergone by Mathew and Elsa in Malaya (characters from Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Place, which I was reading at that time). 

The magic rub

Here too, the main crop is rubber, but nestling beneath the tall trees were pineapple shrubs. Thressy had answers to all my questions, I'm guessing others before me have quizzed her thus. From her I learnt that a rubber tree lives for 30 years, and it takes five or six years for it to mature and yield the white milk or sap. Of course this also means that during the early stages, when the trees need looking after, the land is positively yield-less. That is where the tropical pineapples come in, because they make the best intercrop. 

Our walk turned out to be a pleasurable exercise with her pointing out and naming every tree and shrub there was. Sajeev and I learnt to recognize the magnificent Mahogany, to spot and step away from the parachuting itchy-worms that live on tall teak trees, to differentiate between coffee and coco (in my defense, they look rather similar in their fruitless state). There were others too... like the cannon ball tree and the Elephant Ear Figs, but I’ve completely lost track of all the others she pointed out.

Fishing...

I’m not an outdoorsy person, (but you probably known that already from my earlier trekking post), and until then I had never really given fishing a thought. But that’s what we did next, at a small pond in the estate. Hook, line and sinker in hand, I waited for my first catch. Of course Thressy being the expert caught a large one just minutes after she had lowered the hook. Sajeev soon caught up with her, and just when I thought I'll never be able to catch one before losing my patience, there it was. A slight tug, a reflexive pull, and I caught my first fish ever! The stem of a coconut leaf was cleverly fashioned to hold all the fishes together and proudly we walked back home. What a day this was turning out to be, but the fun was just beginning.

We went in, got out the inflatable boat, took turns to fill it with air and then carried it all the way back to the lake, for a boating session. My first few attempts at rowing ended up with the boat going around in circles, but soon the rhythm of the water took over and it started moving in the direction that I wanted it to go. Boating done, it was time to visit the footwear factory.

'em chic Methyz 

Thressy’s folks own Methiyadi, the colourful, comfortable and chic footwear brand. I can vouch for its durability, because my pair has lived through the long Triund trek (check the pics) and the travels in Turkey. To finally see them being made at her factory, with the rubber collected from the plantation I had just visited, was something else. Uncle Tom took us on a guided tour of the factory, explained the manufacturing, colouring and assembling process, and also gifted me a brand new pair!

Oh, and then there was Yoyo (short for yojimbo which translates to bodyguard in Japanese), the cutest little baby pug. He was just three weeks old, and was already a handful. He behaved like he owned the place, sneaked under our legs, yelped and squealed when we accidentally stepped on his tiny tail, tripped on the TV wires, pulled things down and did everything possible to gain our attention. And when he was tired of all his silly games, he came by and slept at (and sometimes on) our feet. But that was for just a while; soon he’d be up again, going over the whole routine.

Sitting pretty: Yoyo

When hard work mushrooms

It was getting dark, and was time for us to call it a day. But before that we made one final stop at Harithavidhya, an NGO run by the Kainady family to promote sustainable farm management practices. Here, farmers are given training and new skill sets and also access to books and literature that deal with similar topics. The remnants of a mushroom farming class remained in one of the rooms - small little bulbs growing from within a strawlined plastic bag. Of all the birthdays I've ever had, this was the most unique - fabulous new experiences and food for thought. 

So today, on Thressy’s birthday, as she celebrates it in new and faraway Korea, between lab assignments and class work, I dedicate this post to her, and wish her a birthday that is as exciting as the one she ensured I had. 

Today, on your birthday Thressy.....