The train pulled into Hospet
after 3 am and I opened the latch, and with half my body leaning out and bag
slung over one shoulder, shawl tailing out the open door for several feet and
whipping in the night air, I hoped out of the moving train and onto the
deserted platform. Under yellow lights and stars I could make out a few bodies
of individuals and families sleeping on the ground around the station and
quietly passed them to awaiting tuktuk.
There was only one awaiting
already fully loaded with a family, so I sat upfront on the single seat meant
for the driver, with the father of the family sitting on his opposite side. I
kept making funny faces to the baby in the backseat, who smiled under her
blankets.
We dropped them off a few
kilometers away and continued the next ten kms with me in the backseat, leaning
out of the car as he smoked his bidi and the embers flew about the tuktuk, just
so I could see the moon. I stopped leaning out though after a ravenous stray
charged our auto, jaws chomping and the tuktuk jerking violently to avoid him
with an evasiveness reserved not even for dodging potholes.
He dropped me off at the entrance
of 100 feet tall pyramidal entrance of the Virupaksha temple where a hundred
pilgrims slept under blankets. In the morning the temple gate would open and
river would be free to cross. So I slept.
I woke up and looked around
sometime after sunrise; all were awake except for a few. Monkeys were running
around everywhere disturbing those that still slept. I paid 50 rupees to enter
the 700 temple of the god of destruction, and after passing before the Deity, dropped
another 5 rupees down the trunk of the temple elephant Lakshmi, who passed it
to his caretaker and returned her trunk to my forehead for a blessing.
On the edge of the town begin the
ruins of deserted bazaar. A level marketplace outlined by stone corridors
overgrown with weeds. Here merchants from all over Indo-China once exchanged
goods and openly sold emeralds and rubies. At its edge lay another temple and
path through a set of switchbacks behind a mountain, which eventually cut off
the view of the new bazaar and sight of moving people in the distant village.
Succulents, oaks, thistles and brush between precarious boulders that formed
valleys, ridges, and mountains that looked of the sand castles you make on the
beach as the sand dribbles out and accumulates in round balls. Each turn
revealed hidden temples and outposts. I passed through an old temple ground
complete with several buildings, with no company but a half a dozen holy men in
orange robes who floated by.
I climbed the mountain and sat on
a ledge overlooking the river to the left, the temple grounds below and
plantain groves and coconut trees alongside a stream to the right. I had run
out of water so headed down another way to the village, fell asleep while
awaiting food on a comfy pillow floor, and made my way to cross the river.
There I met an Indian girl, a
rare talkative solo traveler, and we talked on the river steps next to bathing
men, women spreading linens out in the sun, and kids running around. After the
boat ride she asked me to join her for lunch so I ate again. Her friend came
and she told me to join them at the lake, as they left on a moped. I checked in
my room by the rice paddy fields and within ten minutes was on a bike heading
out of the village, past goat and cattle herders, hunched over men carrying
bundles of weeds on their backs and a sickle from their hip, and a lonesome
white donkey walking all alone on a dirt road. I explored the alcoves of the
lake but never found them. Instead on a rock face two men who, though we shared
no similar language, motioned me to join them over their makeshift dinner of
rice as I came out of an outcropping. And so I joined them, with a wagging tail
stray next us, and none of us spoke, just smiles. They encouraged me to eat
more rice from the open bag where the three of us ate with your hands and scooped
handfuls of mint rice with curd and peanuts up. They sprawled out after on the
rock, to watch the sun dip below the ridge and wanted me to stay, but I wanted
to drive the bike back while it was still light. Dodging potholes, cattle and
cars is hard enough when you can’t drive in the day.
Back at the guest house, in an
open air terrace of pillows and candles and hammocks, I motioned for a beer and
hoped the boulder wall for a better view of the sunset over the raised rice
paddy fields and river. Overhead herons flew, dogs played in the fields, and I
found a Spanish man and Portuguese gal. We talked well until it was dark and
they invited me to dinner, to a quiet place they had seen last night, after
discovering the owner drunk and passed out in the street and kids standing over
him laughing and poking him. They carried him into his guest house and got to
talking with the family. There we ate a meal of thali and the kids came in and
fell asleep where they dropped. The power cut and we continued conversing over
candlelight. It came back on, and the three of us sat as the family relaxed
next to us, the wife and husband watching a black and white TV, while the kids
slept about her, later whimpering as she lifted them and put them to bed.
I thought of waking up as we
pulled into the driveway after driving back from seeing grandma in LA. And standing
on the toilet seat to get a piggyback ride from mom or dad to bed.
The mosquitoes came out, and I
thought of how after dinner my dad would take us to nearby Christopher Park and
when we felt our first bites, we walked back happy.
I woke in the morning to a
message from the Indian girl to meet her early afternoon, before the last boat to
cross the river, which I planned to take to catch my bus in Hospet back to
Bangalore. I checked out and chucked my bag in the corner where other backpacks
piled up and got back on the bike, and at the village intersection turned right
for Hanuman’s birthplace temple, the Monkey God, principle character of the
Ramayana epic. At the top the morning breeze met and cooled my sweat. A barren
tree with ribbons billowing in the wind. Monkeys gorging on offerings of
bananas. Next to it stood a cement pinnacle with a circle stone at its base
that worshippers placed their hands around, and a miniature cave with three
deities decorated in flowers and bindi, the markings of a thousand oil candles
and incense and ash on the floor. The temple was white and red on the exterior,
and the inside had a papier-mâché look of metallic gray paint and red and blue
markings, with chants and a layer of undisturbed smoke of incense and candles
at its ceiling. We approached the deity on hands and knees and stood whisking
the rising incense in our face in commune with the divine, and after a series
of prostrations and bows, I stood alone as the room cleared. In a state of
meditative trance, watering eyes I get when I can’t explain something
beautiful, all tampered by a subduing equanimity.
“Where are you from?” asked the
attending holy man that stood next to the deity, overseeing a table of
donations, coconut water, sugar, leaves, red kumkum, and clay oil lamps.
“America.”
“Here, please” and he poured the
holy water in my hand to drink and run the remaining through my long hair, and
parting my hair, with thumb marked me with a
red bindi and turned to the wall and rubbed the remaining powder on the
wall, streaked with a thousand red marks
from previous pilgrims.
As I made my way down the white
steps behind me I heard the cheerful sing-song voice of Hingilish children ask all those they passed “Helloooo, where you
frommmm?” As I stood on an overlook the two girls passed me and asked, I
answered and gave them slight bow and “Ram Ram, Namaste” to their delight. They
motioned for a picture, hoped over eagerly after to inspect it, and went about
skipping hand and hand down the steps, stopping in conversation with old women
holding their sarees as they climbed.
I took the bike further down the
road to Anegundi, passed small villages and terraced paddy fields with boulders
sprinkled about. Anegundi was on the smallest villages I have yet to see, and
as it was Sunday, the dirt streets were quiet but for children everywhere
playing in the streets.
Bought a coconut for 20 rupees
that the man spun in his hand as he sliced it open for me to drink. Walked
alongside the river, exchanging greetings with all that smiled my way. The
banks were covered in thickets. There was an opening on a flat rock where women
washing dishes and clothes talked, and I sat alongside the river. I later found
the circular boats of intertwined reeves docked and lapping in the water, and climbed
into one and fell asleep the sound of the river, playing kids, and
roosters.
I made my way back to Hampi early
afternoon to meet the Indian girl. “You should stay another night, don’t leave
yet.” She said what I had been thinking all day. So, I did. I skipped my bus,
took her up on her offer to stay the night with her, and made plans to meet her
later that evening after she said bye to her friends.
I had found a small eat on the
outskirts of town near the river earlier in the day while joy riding, so went
there for a meal of Aloo Gobo, cauliflower in gravy, and chapatti. At the foot
of his restaurant was a path, he said after dinner it was the best place to see
the sunset. As I climbed I found a company of other travelers up there, and
barefoot children jumping boulders carrying insulated jugs of chia, the Indian
mainstay tea, effortlessly following them. I cut open my hand as I slipped on a
boulder, and the blood looked even redder and pure against the setting sun.
We met up later, I showered to
clean the dirt and blood out. We talked on the porch till the last of the
daylight disappeared and then walked around the guest houses and their
restaurants on the street, while on the opposite side stood paddy fields that
softly reflected stars and moon, and housed a symphony of crickets and other
company.
On our way back to the room we
found a few foreigners she had met earlier on her trip outside their rooms so we
joined them. The power was out again and the only light came from the candles
and their smokes.
In the morning I rented a bike
again from a ten year old kid, and without any exchange of information or ID,
just 200 rupees, I took her to Anegundi. She was doing a report on cottage
industries rival, namely community art forms that have been threatened to the
point of extinction in many villages. Whereas Channapatna near Bangalore
continues to make wooden toys that she remembers playing with in her childhood,
or Jaipur in Rajasthan is known for block printing like the shirt she wore
yesterday, Anegundi is known for banana fiber products. Here, a woman has
dedicated her life to reviving the craft and even founded an eco-heritage
nonprofit not only to support the local women working in the trade, but to
safeguard the village ruins, promote sustainable living, and foster community
centric economic development. She invited the two of us to lunch in a friend’s
garden, that with the sound of the birds, magpies, laurels and many others I
don’t know mixed with the laughter of the school kids next door during recess.
After lunch we decided to split
for a little bit, while she interviewed some of the women and spoke to the
director of the nonprofit. Over her shoulder during lunch I saw a stone path
that bent behind a tree through the garden so, leaving my sandals behind that I
had taken off before lunch, I decided to follow it. The path led out of the
garden to a flat rock with pink, purple, green sarees spread in the sun drying,
and a littering of kids clothes. To the right was a rock ledge I hoped and through
the brush, sat on a boulder overlooking a rice paddy field. This field led to
another, and another, and I followed on the compacted mud paths with imprints
of feet and hooves. Soon I was on a dirt road, and I kept walking, past a cow
herder who motioned to me. He didn’t speak English, but he pointed to my pocket
hearing a sound and I pulled out a bell, the same worn by cows and goat. I had
bought it yesterday in the bazaar from a lady under a Banyan tree who sold
coins from the East India Company, Pre-Independence era and Nehru’s time. The
lady didn’t have change so she pointed to the bell. Perfect, I thought. I had
had a bell on my camping bag since the Rockies to warn bears we were coming but
had ripped it off before Rajasthan. This will do. I forgot I had left it in my
jeans, not noticing the jingles as I walked, jumped and climbed about. He
smiled when I pulled out the bell. Then motioned for a smoke, so we both did,
in the middle of his herd, and then parted ways. I walked through the grazing
fields, saw a rock cropping and began to climb and leap from one boulder to
another. I saw in the distance a temple of the same stone and made my way.
Under crumbling arches and the empty nests of the deities in the temple’s inner
sanctum, I sat. To the west stood a formidable ridge and the remnants of the
old cities defensive parameter, and another abandoned temple. I traced my barefoot
meditative steps back to her, and found her in the village on the dirt porch of
a woman’s house surrounded by four sitting older women all seated differently.
In a dirt intersection where a man reading a paper manned his both, a dog slept
on a pile, and another grouping of old ladies sat talking on an opposite porch.
And old roadsters passed, goats and barefoot kids.
Back in Hampi I waited for the
boat in the hammock sipping a mango lassi, watching red ants with the sun
behind them illuminating them, as they crossed a clothes line. We crossed the
river and shared a ride to Hospet. She
had a 7 pm train and me a 10:30 pm bus. At a train crossing, the idling tuktuks
and bikes spewed petrol in the cold night air. In our open air tuktuk, next to
us inches away where others, piled with families, children, men on bikes. And
she sang a Hindi song about love in my ear. We parted at rail station and I
bummed around Hospet for a little in search of food and clean clothes for the 9
hour night sleeper bus. And in the end, just stood at a wooden shack with
sheets of tobacco pouches and jars of treats, with a few men watching an old
film, and with a chia in my hand and a shawl wrapped around my head, sipped and
sighed.
