On a temple trail in Orissa

Early morning when I walked towards the temple - without any pundit in tow - whoa! did I bargain for this kind of a crowd? No. Perhaps I should have forgotten my catechism class and hired a 'quick access' pundit but I was already jostling for a little space and could not even hark to a pundit. Every push took me a step forward towards the gods and I stoically waited for my turn to get inside… And when my turn came I was plain overawed. The large-eyed Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, seemed to touch my soul and despite being pushed off before I could even commune with Lord Balbhadra and Subhadra, my split-second tryst with the gods seemed worth it.

At the beginning of my temple trail in Orissa instead of the gods I thought of the word 'juggernaut' and my starched English teacher in school. How humdrum! How ironical! To a bunch of giggly girls, she had tried hard to explain that 'juggernaut' stems from the word Jagannath and borrows its meaning from an olden practice in Puri in which devotees threw themselves in front of an enormous wooden car to be crushed and head straight to heaven. Really? An entire class had sighed in disbelief until 'juggernaut' seeped reluctantly into the vocabulary. As my car rolled towards Puri that mass sigh of a bunch of giggly girls returned hastily.

Puri was still some miles away, but you know you are closing in on a religious town when there's a whiff of incense in the air and when broken hymns walk the streets. Just that this time there was another clue - the 65-metre high spires of the Jagannath Temple were scraping the azure sky. I knew I was not too far from the gods who live in the 12th century temple built by the Ganga king Chodagangadeva. There were other pestering reminders too - men in dhoti with their forehead smeared with sandal paste were frantically knocking the car doors. They were promising to beat the snaky queue and 'good and quick access' to the gods. I wasn't surprised but bribing my way to Lord Jagannath, his brother Balbhadra and sister Subhadra did not go well with all the catechism that I had picked on way to growing up. I prepped myself to face the crowd.

Early morning when I walked towards the temple - without any pundit in tow - whoa! did I bargain for this kind of a crowd? No. Perhaps I should have forgotten my catechism class and hired a 'quick access' pundit but I was already jostling for a little space and could not even hark to a pundit. Every push took me a step forward towards the gods and I stoically waited for my turn to get inside… And when my turn came I was plain overawed. The large-eyed Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, seemed to touch my soul and despite being pushed off before I could even commune with Lord Balbhadra and Subhadra, my split-second tryst with the gods seemed worth it. As I walked out of the temple doors, I was reminded of the European sailors who used the temple as a navigation point, calling it the 'white pagoda' - the white coming from the ingenuity of an 18th century king who plastered the walls of the temple to protect it from the salty sea.

If Jagannath Temple was the white pagoda for the European sailors, the stunning temple of Konark was referred to as the black pagoda. Konark was a port city and the sea once touched the temple that was built in the shape of a colossal chariot with Surya's barouche with 24 gigantic stone wheels pulled by seven fiery horses. The sea has receded and the temple stands lonely amidst the sand, but the image of the stone wheel lives on in the nation's ethos as a motif of classical India, an image that refuses to wither with time. As I stood barefoot in the natamandira (hall of dance) I got a little poetic but before any couplets could saunter my way, I quickly borrowed what Rabindranath Tagore had said of the temple: The language of stone here surpasses the language of man.

With two temples ticked off my itinerary, my godly trail was getting holier and I was happy I had some more on the route. Another morning as I looked up at the sun blazing out of the fluffy misshaped clouds, I noticed another spire. When I asked around I was told that the 55-metre high curvilinear tower was part of the 11th century Lingaraja Temple in which the main deity the Svayambhu Linga is not strictly a Shiva linga, but a hari-hara linga, i.e., a half-Shiva half-Vishnu. While this information was being doled out by eager early morning onlookers, someone tapped and whispered, "Are you a Hindu?" I was taken aback by this sudden curiosity about my religion, but I learnt later that non-Hindus are not allowed inside the Lingaraja temple.

On the fringes of Bhubaneshwar is the circular Yogini Temple which is hypaethral (having no roof), a rare style of architecture. The circular hall has 64 niches, out of which 63 contain images of Goddess Yogini.- some looking sensuous with bejewelled bodices while others terrifying with shrunken faces and animal heads. While the Yogini Temple looks mystical when the sun pours in from the open sky, the Rajarani Temple that probably takes its name from the red and gold sandstone called rajarani looks stunning with miniature temple spires clasping the main tower.

Bhubaneshwar was my base camp for the temple trail and I was laden with ornate images of the Hindu temples, but when you are in Orissa you can not go back without a dekko at the Buddhist sites, including the Diamond Triangle - Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri and Udaigiri. Lalitgiri, dating back to 1st century AD is touted as one of the earliest Buddhist complexes, but Dhauli was the closest from Bhubaneshwar and that became my first convenient stop.

Dhauli sits by river Daya and is known for the rock edicts of Emperor Ashoka dating back to 260 BC. However, Udaigiri is considered the most important Buddhist complex in Orissa. Resting at the foot of a large hill, the archaeological remains of Udaigiri comprise a brick stupa, two brick monasteries, stone stepwell and Bodhistava and Dhayani moods from the Buddha pantheon. At Lalitgiri are ruins of a monastery and votive stupas. The discovery of a casket replete with sacred relics makes Lalitgiri a favourite destination for Buddhist scholars and adherents. In the beginning, Ratnagiri in the Birupa river valley was an important centre of Mahayan Buddhism but during the 8-9th century it became the seat of Tantric Buddhism or Vajrayana art and philosophy.

In the past days I had picked up too much faith at the doorsteps of temples and was limping with sore feet, but my rendezvous with the gods in Orissa was not yet over. I did not have too many hours before I could catch my flight and the guide was eager to squeeze in a quick detour to the hills of Khandagiri and Udaygiri that were chiseled and tunneled to build a multi-storied apartment residence for Jain monks. Built by King Kharavela in the first century BC, Khandagiri and Udaygiri are known for their caves, 15 and 18 caves, respectively. Rani Ghumpha (Queen's Cave) has two-stories while Hathi Ghumpha (Elephant's Cave) is known for its inscription which describes the city "was made to dance with joy." Standing in front of the caves, I imagined the joys of the city - bathing tanks, sprawling courtyards, exquisite sculptural friezes and arenas for dance and music.

When an aircraft buzzed in the blue sky, I was suddenly reminded of the seven-km drive to Bhubaneshwar that would haul me back to another ordinary day in an ordinary life. Before that I had some monkey business to handle - feed the incorrigible monkeys, buy my peace and then wriggle out before they got ravenous. I hurried to catch my flight and the monkeys, with a fistful of groundnuts, seemed blissful in the city that was made to dance with joy!

Published in India Today Travel Plus Anniversary issue, 2006