On Friday, October 23rd we got up at 5:30 to take a leisurely walk through Mamallapuram to Krishna's Butterball and Baghiratha's Penance. In the neighborhoods through which we passed, the women were sweeping dirt and trash out of their houses into the street, after which they drew an intricate white, curlicued pattern, with rice flour or chalk powder, in the street out front. We watched as one woman did this, interrupted when a neighbor's calf, full of youthful exuberance, galloped across it. She patiently repaired and finished the design, and then the house was ready for the day's activities, beginning with cooking her husband's breakfast. Sudha said that there was no set design--each day, each woman drew what she felt like drawing: there was a subtle competition with her neighbors.
Eventually, we came to Krishna's Butterball, a huge stone balanced precariously on a hillside. Sudha told us that his last tour group had rolled it up the hill, so he expected us to roll it back down, but we weren't able to do that. Nearby were some small temples that had been carved out of gigantic boulders. Finally, we came to Baghiratha's Penance, a huge, elaborate frieze carved into a cliff, illustrating the story of how the sage Baghiratha had undergone an extreme ascetic discipline of fasting and standing on one leg, in order to win Shiva's assistance in bringing the river Ganges down from heaven. A cleft in the cliff represented the Ganges itself, and in ancient times (all of Mamallapuram's monuments date from the 7th century A.D.), water would be poured down that cleft, to imitate the river. The details of gods, people and animals, including a herd of elephants, are amazing.
After breakfast, we visited the Shore Temple, which has been sitting by the sea (at first on an island) in wind, rain and tsunami, for nearly fourteen centuries. Then we visited the Five Rathas, another spectacular group of temples carved out of neighboring rock outcroppings, no two of them alike in style. Everywhere there were men, selling postcards and little carvings, and gypsy women and girls, selling necklaces.
Then we went on down the coast to Pondicherry, which had been a French colony until 1954 and retains a French flavor (the policemen wear round flat-top caps (kepis), like French police. After lunch and a rest, we went for a walk from the Sri Aurobindo ashram, which appears to own half the property in town, to a temple to Ganesha, the elephant-headed god. In front of the temple was a real, live elephant, named Lakshmi, who, if you held out a twenty-rupee note, would take it with her trunk, hand it to her master, then lay her trunk on your head, as a blessing. We all did this, with cash supplied by Sudha from the trip "slush fund."
We finished the evening walking the Promenade along the Bay of Bengal waterfront past a monument to Gandhi, with a huge statue, all the way to the end.
Eventually, we came to Krishna's Butterball, a huge stone balanced precariously on a hillside. Sudha told us that his last tour group had rolled it up the hill, so he expected us to roll it back down, but we weren't able to do that. Nearby were some small temples that had been carved out of gigantic boulders. Finally, we came to Baghiratha's Penance, a huge, elaborate frieze carved into a cliff, illustrating the story of how the sage Baghiratha had undergone an extreme ascetic discipline of fasting and standing on one leg, in order to win Shiva's assistance in bringing the river Ganges down from heaven. A cleft in the cliff represented the Ganges itself, and in ancient times (all of Mamallapuram's monuments date from the 7th century A.D.), water would be poured down that cleft, to imitate the river. The details of gods, people and animals, including a herd of elephants, are amazing.
After breakfast, we visited the Shore Temple, which has been sitting by the sea (at first on an island) in wind, rain and tsunami, for nearly fourteen centuries. Then we visited the Five Rathas, another spectacular group of temples carved out of neighboring rock outcroppings, no two of them alike in style. Everywhere there were men, selling postcards and little carvings, and gypsy women and girls, selling necklaces.
Then we went on down the coast to Pondicherry, which had been a French colony until 1954 and retains a French flavor (the policemen wear round flat-top caps (kepis), like French police. After lunch and a rest, we went for a walk from the Sri Aurobindo ashram, which appears to own half the property in town, to a temple to Ganesha, the elephant-headed god. In front of the temple was a real, live elephant, named Lakshmi, who, if you held out a twenty-rupee note, would take it with her trunk, hand it to her master, then lay her trunk on your head, as a blessing. We all did this, with cash supplied by Sudha from the trip "slush fund."
We finished the evening walking the Promenade along the Bay of Bengal waterfront past a monument to Gandhi, with a huge statue, all the way to the end.
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