Don't Worry Be Hampi

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.