Bhima

The empty temples scare me. They stand here, stripped of their purpose by the invaders from Golkonda, Bijapur and Delhi. The idols are destroyed, nothing remains except the stories. Some temples don’t even have the stories. Guides make stuff up, they tell unsuspecting travellers that there’s some story here. There is, but it isn’t the story the guides are feeding them. Hampi enthralls me on a level that I couldn’t begin to understand as a child. I feel at peace, sitting under a tree, not realizing that a spider was climbing on my arm. My skin has turned coppery in colour, my aunts tell me that it’ll take months for this tan to go. I will take that as an indicator then. The colour of my skin should tell me if it has been too long since I’ve visited Hampi. ...

As I read the Mahabharata today, a British lady came up to me to ask me about Hampi. She was wondering if the heat had something to do with global warming. I assured her that it has always been this hot here. It’s why Krishnadevaraya built so many pushkarinis, and why the landscape is filled with mantapas for weary travellers to rest as they walked in the hot sun. ...

Wherever I sit down in Hampi, I can’t help but ask myself if once, a long time ago, Krishnadevaraya walked past this very spot. I wonder if I have walked along paths he liked to walk through, I wonder if he could appreciate the poetry of sitting under a tree to read the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is daunting in scope. I sat under this tree and read of the lament of Damayanti as her husband Nala forsook her in the woods. I read how Bhima scolded Yudhishtira for being weak willed at the dice game. And I cheered as Arjuna fought the Trymbaka Karpadin himself, the Great Shiva, to prove his worth. ...

This land belongs to the monkeys. It is theirs to frolic in, it is theirs to own. We have somehow faltered here, and they know it far better than we. The wind blows my hair into my eyes, it cries out, howling like a dog in the distance. Perhaps it really is a dog, perhaps Dharma is watching me read the Mahabharata here. Or perhaps it is Vayu, listening in as I read how his son Bhima kills the demons Hidimba and Baka. ...