Spiritraveller

On the road from the Nimishamba Devi Temple in Srirangapatana to the Chamundeshwari Temple, Mysore a few thoughts come to mind.  Why does the Indian male treat the women in his life so badly? We chant the names of the Goddess with a fervor, we pray in fear because many of Her forms are that of a warrior, destroyer of evil, a clearer of routes. We call to her Maa, mother Goddess! Red bandannas with silver trims are tied to head, wrists and car mirrors as a proof of our devotion – and then we read an endless litany of newspaper stories describing rapes, gang-rapes, juvenile rapes, wife beatings and many such desecrations of the Devis closer home. We climb hills to pay obeisance because reaching Her always requires effort, bhajans are sung all night long in lusty voice - and then closer home, abysmal disrespect? Another   thought is the magical change that topography can undergo in a fairly short Indian road trip. From rivers and canals, red earth and green fie...

I had visited the temple a decade back but the doors had been closed to me. Perhaps I had lingered on for minutes longer at Tipu Sultan’s summer palace at Srirangapatna and He did not want to be kept waiting, anyway it was definitely time for the priests’ siesta and the doors were shut. I reached in time this time, 10 years later. We drove back from Nimishamba temple past small patches of Rose plantations and roadside stalls selling Gulkand, Rose oil and attars. I ignored the verdant appeal of Dariya Daulat Bagh, the lawns and gardens in which is set the Dariya Daulat Palace, Tipu Sultan’s summer retreat that had delayed us the last time. Srirangapatna, Seringapatnam to the British, is a small but historic city almost qualifying for the status of a ‘cute’ city if it hadn’t been so infinitely shrouded in incense and wrapped in war cries from another time – an island situated 14 kilometres from Mysore. The road to the Lord’s abode is narrow but smooth and took me past sna...

There is a sketch that’s etched in my mind. It’s also reflected in the many narratives of India – in novels, essays, Hollywood movies depicting an Indian scene [before Slumdog Millionaire, I must admit]. There is a shrine, often large, sometimes smaller – shaded by a tree - by the bank of a river, a lake, a reservoir. This could well be the retirement vision of peace and calm for many – etched deeper by a constant exposure to such a place in life, or through art. I first came face to face with such a place, decades ago, in the shadow of a family tragedy in a small dusty town called Lalitpur. There had been a loss in the family and many rituals involved a river close by. There was a small temple built in the shadow of a large peepul . The reservoir channeled water into two small shallow pools where I swam with my cousins. A tragedy temporarily pushed back for a while as we jumped around in those pools on hot summer afternoons. A naughty uncle asked a bearded, mat lock hai...