Second day of Discovering Native of temple town!

After a full day of walking and walking and walking, quite exhausting we had a small day today at Anegundi. Anegundi is known as native place of Vijaynagara kingdom.

Anegundi, place where peace flows in air, unlike Hampi streets where people keep rushing and guides, autowalas, cyclewalas keep calling everyone and also place which smells of people more than archaeology. So this is a place which speaks a language of culture and belongingness. Our day started in Auto rikshaws, the part of the day which everybody loved the most. Sitting at the back seat, holding ourselves, protecting ourselves, everytime with the fear of falling down from it, that was our favourite part, after all everyone is a design student, would do anything just to see running roads down the feet, enchanting  scenes passing by, rocks so tactfully arranged as if it has been done manually to create a mountain, thin streams of water running at the side of the roads. We at first went to a temple where the act of stacking bangles on one of the small poles amused me and the rough, cool texture of floor relaxed me. This temple, Ganganatha Swamy Temple had a place for yagna outside the temple, reminding me of times when yagna was the most important part of a place for god to worship Fire.

One of the five tatva I am while making earth,

Symbol of fear and destruction, I am strong enough to destroy your whole yard.

People fear me, people worship me.

People find comfort in me, People find harm in me.

I am people’s belief, I am people’s panic.

When I burn in wood people worship me, when I burn in homes, people curse me.

The next was place of Jains. Looking like an abandoned temple in a sleepy village, a place where Hinduism as well as Jainism coexisted, this place was a definite reference to History of cultures and Religions of India.

Walking back towards the point we had started, we saw a fort, abandoned too.

 With staircase so small and risky, It was a single floored building with two rooms on First floor with 3 windows seen from outside and every window had a platform to sit and relax. Seems that, even then windows weren’t just something of ventilation, they provided a peaceful space for thoughts as well where one could sit for hours and relax while being lost in thoughts looking outside at the sleepy village. Being so peaceful, it did give me feel of sitting there and getting lost in it’s beauty. With some of the walls having pictures of Hampi clad in dust, it did say something about the small fort and its connection with Hampi.  One black and white picture of family caught my attention. Maybe it was picture of the Royal family. While struggling through the broken staircase leading to terrace, the texture of Stone floor and walls was priceless and so relaxing and cold in warm weather. Broken terrace of broken fort was as beautiful as the stones. The view was wide.

While walking towards the river, we saw a woman converting some brown strands of a fibre into ropes. A hobby maybe, I told myself as I tried to convince myself that how can a woman of such a small village be doing business.

 But still this scene did leave me thinking about it. After few steps of walking,we stopped at river. River here too? It was a beautiful scene. So unexpected it is to find a river so easily for people who stay in city, where all you can see are diverted water routes. Was the diversion necessary? After all inhabitation is for humans! And which human can hate these beautiful rivers! For human safety, humans have created a bubble outside them and refuse to come out from that bubble to experience adventures of nature.

64 pillared was definitely a beautiful architecture to see but there was no way to reach till the structure as the nearby areas were fields and place of wild grass. I read somewhere that 64 pillared has 64 forms of art practices of Vijaynagara Empire depicted  on each pillar.

The way is more beautiful sometimes than the destination. This is what happened in case of Raghuvendra Swamy temple. The feel of touching water from the boat with the hands as if everything is slipping at the same time at which everything is coming back in hand. 

What do Urbanites know about nature I thought? Living in big cities, having knowledge of only his desk? And here are villagers, having to see all these natural beauties and knowing everything about wildlife. Who is more knowledgeable? Those who know nature practically? Or those who spend years studying about various things whose one part is nature. Education and this system of education, is it important at all? Literacy rates of urbanite maybe high but knowledge rates of villagers will be higher. Experiencing practicality of life is important.

We stopped at a point and the boatman warned us for not stepping into water as it is dangerous. It was so difficult to resist water, the playful water protected by mountains of stones at side. Such a beautiful scene it was to see a point where stones and water meet, stones being submerged in water and protruding out somewhere as if to give a throne to tapasvis!

Raghuvendra Swamy temple had many Tulsi platform like huge structures. After coming back from Temple we went to Chintamani temple, again on the same side of the river where we had started. Chintamani temple was a sleepy temple,  found men sleeping here and there. Justified resons- the place was extremely peaceful with cold stones with a beautiful scene from first floor where the temple was. Stones, river and temple! What can be a better place?

We called the day off then and went to a place to have food. While walking towards the place to have food me and my friend bumped into this man who was constantly asking my friend from where she is as she looked Maharashtrian. It was kind of scary and irritating but funny too. The roof caught my eyes! With palm and banana leaves and bamboo sticks the whole structure was sheltered. What a good use of resources I thought!

The food. Me being North Indian, it was initially difficult to accept the fact that I will have to eat rice  with hands. Yes for sure eating with hands maybe a pleasure, but for a person who has never done that, this place wasn’t very comfortable to do that and at the point where I was extremely hungry, having something which I might not like would have been out of question but as the food was being served and I started having food, It was the best south Indian Thali I have ever had in my life. I did feel bad about my initial thoughts about food. Every type of food has its own taste, own language!

The following evening we had “round chairs discussion”, where I had listed down a few points on which I could work on in Hampi and Anegundi. But after realising by what my facilitator said, I increased my fluidity and thought of looking as characters after meeting one of the characters today who was constantly asking my friend from where she is just to irritate her and was not letting us go until we answered all his questions!

Hence I increased space for changes in my plan and thought of looking such characters in Hampi bazar as bazar was the part which attracted me the most.