Tamil Nadu 2006 |
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Week 4Feb 27, 28 and Mar 1, 2006 |
I have taken a couple of days off and travelled down to Mahabalipuram, about 50km south of Chennai, on the coast. This is a place we passed through four years ago, and I have always wanted to go back. It more than lived up to expectations.
First, I had to find where the bus went from. I went to Adyar Bus depot, which several people told me was the right place. It isn't. Then I got a bus to Thiruvanmiyur Temple (try to say that without practice) where I was also assured the ECR (East Coast Road, they abbreviate everything) bus went from. Several roared past my feebly waved hand. Then an auto driver stopped and asked "Where you WANT to go?" I said Mahabalipuram (I had practiced that) and he waved me to another bus stop down the road and that worked. 45 minutes later and for just Rs16 (about 20p) I was dropped off near my very comfortable hotel. The next two days I spent in a haze in this wonderful place. It is an ancient capital and is full of old temples carved directly out of granite cliffs. Many of the sculptures are world famous, and frighteningly old. Most were carved between 600 and 800AD. Yet you can walk up to them and sit on them. The town is also full of stone carvers, tinking away at huge blocks of black stone, or tiny slips of pink marble. The big statues weigh several tons and are uniformly high quality. Most are destined for temples. The smaller ones range from OK, to really quite good, to a few stunningly good. I went in and out of nearly every carving shop in town and eventually found one "that spoke to me". How on earth I am going to get it back on the plane, I don't know.
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Fishermen on the beach in the morning. A boat had taken the net (at least a kilometre long, made of hand twisted coir rope) and dragged one end right out to sea and then looped back to further along the beach. Two groups of men then hauled in each end whilst two men in the water kept the net open until it was pulled ashore. I didn't see what they caught as the sand eventually became too hot for me to stand on. I watched for half an hour and they only got a fraction of it in in that time. |
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Every now and then a particularly large wave would lift the net in and there would be frantic shouting and heaving. (People are very anxious about large waves here, this whole beach was swept by the tsunami and the hotel I was in was flooded right through and is still being rebuilt behind a heightened sea defence.) |
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The fishing boats are flat bottomed and run up the beach.
Everyone jumps in, thrust long poles across the boat and heave it up and
drag it up the beach. The surf is very powerful. All of these painted boats
are fibreglass and every one is painted with the names of the relief
organisations which donated them after the tsunami. The little dot in the distance in the water is a man swimming at the apex of the loop of the net. |
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Culture. This is the "penance relief" claimed, with justification, to be the largest bas-relief in the world (this photo shows less than a third of it). The story of what is going on here is far too complex to go into. It doesn't matter, this is humbling. These elephants are life-size, carved in a solid granite cliff in 700 AD. They are 1,300 years old. |
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This is another life sized sculpture, again cut into the solid granite cliff, this time inside a hollowed-out temple. This cow and calf is regarded by many as one of the great sculptures of the world, and I agree. The horn and muzzle is black from having been handled for the last 1,300 years. Can you imagine being allowed to touch them in the British Museum? The lady to the left seems to have attracted her own fair share of fondling... |
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Rani the sculptor and his marble statue of Durga, the goddess of victory. As I said, I went into any number of sculpture shops ("I give you a good price", "My sculptures are the best in town", "You are my lucky customer today, you must buy here", "I have a friend in Penrith in Cumbria" (that one pulled me up for a few minutes), etc. etc."). Rani was simply sitting outside a tiny shop by a table with a few of his works on it, and they spoke out. Needless to say I have now bought this statue. He has been carving for fifteen years and he was taught by his father who is a wood carver. I didn't dare go and see his father's work, I can't resist good wood carving. |
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A close up of Durga, now sadly wrapped up in multiple
layers of shredded paper, newspaper, polystyrene and bubble wrap until I get
home. The story is a nice one. There was a very tough demon, whose
name I forget. He took over Heaven and Earth and even the gods couldn't
defeat him. So they did the obvious, they went to Parvati, Shiva's wife, and
all the gods gave her their various weapons; clubs, tridents, bows and
swords. She transformed into the furious, multi-armed Durga and went and
knocked the $%&* out of the demon. Which just proves again, when the
going gets tough, the tough get behind the Missus and ask her to sort it
out, "PLEASE?" I thought I needed her on my side. How on Earth I am going to convince British Airways? "Oh THIS? It's just a bit of hand luggage I need on the flight, PLEASE?..." |