Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Leaving the Wayanad National Forest we have a wonderful experience. We were told the elephants are not around now as they have moved inland due to the drought. But as we drive along the road through the sanctuary, there is a large elephant walking toward us on the side of the road. Our driver is scared because he says solo elephants can be very dangerous so we can not stop long but must be on our way toward Mysore.
I have a sophisticated and wealthy Indian friend in Delhi who travels around the world on business and pleasure, buys designer clothes and drives a Mercedes. She chides me for speaking of India as if it was still 1965, as if India was still a backward and undeveloped country. And that is in part true. But in the rural India we have been passing through in the Mysore area, it is still 1965, if not 1865, with the farmers still living in great poverty and very few advances in their lifestyle and probably life expectancy.
Our earlier drive from Thrissur to Wayanad in Northern Kerala took us from the very tropical plains into the cool hills where tea and spices are king and rule the economy. Returning to into the plains of Mysore, we are met with a slightly different culture once again. Beth remarks that when traveling from state to state in the US there is sometimes just a little sense of the difference as one crosses state lines. The changes are greater here, with a different language, slightly different architecture and the overlay of slightly different religious practices.
Entering the countryside of Karnataka State, we see poor stucco and mud houses along the side of the road, women carrying very large pots of water on their heads from the local hand pump, an old woman tilling a field with a cow, groups of people bent over in the fields, perhaps planting or weeding, a hut with cowdung patties stuck to its sides to be used in the future for fuel, a white bullock pulling a cart filled with hay, and ploughs being pulled by two yoked brahma bulls with bells in their ears. The percentage of people in rural poverty may have diminished since my first arrival in India but it still remains very high and a noticeable part of the society. My friend in Delhi certainly knows this way of life still exists but probably thinks of it in the same way we Americans think of our black ghettos, just a small blip in a larger picture of prosperity in our good society. Beth and I met a British couple with posh London accents along the road near our guest house in the countryside of Wayanad last night, talked a bit, and in connection with the drought that is impacting everything in South India, I mentioned how some of our politicians in the U.S. still do not believe in global warming. They responded that America is a strange place in many ways. Our refusal to see the negative pockets of poverty in our own society may be one such example -- as it may be among wealthier Indians as well.
We have been driving many hours a day and the landscape is always interesting, between the rural landscape, small villages and bustling towns, the road from smooth divided highway to narrow broken up asphalt and everything in between.
Once in more urban Mysore, Beth visits the Mysore palace while I head out again for Somnathpur, an hour away, and one of the 3 great Hoysala Temples of the region. It is an archeological site, devoid of tourists and visitors, beautiful in its isolation and fluted lines, decorated with intricate carvings of gods and dancers honoring them.
After a lunch at RRR local eatery, with lines out the door and a wait, where we eat a great lunch served on a banana leaf and sit with two women graduate students from Teheran, in tight pants and tops who admit it would be hard to go back to the restrictions of current day Iran and will look for work in another country.
We arrive late in the afternoon in the town of Belur, in time to visit the great Hoysala Belur temple, built in the 1200’s. Unlike Somnathpur, it is a living temple, surrounded by merchants with their many-colored flowered garlands of devotion for sale. The temple itself takes our breathe away, especially in the setting sun, the dark stone with strong carvings of gods in their many forms and dancers.
Although there has been some wear on the outside from weather, inside the sacred space it is timeless, the sculpture as brilliant and sharp as if made yesterday. There is a cupola worthy of the highest worship, and an alter surrounded by two magnificent statues of Vishnu, inside the inner sanctum the black garlanded image of god as Venkateshvara, with priests in their white dhotis and sacred threads across their bare chests. They are talking and laughing with each other, stopping now and again to give blessed water and offerings to the worshippers. The entry to the inner sanctum is protected by two large Vishnu images, magnificent in their workmanship, both a dark shining black that reflects the sacred fires and oil lamps that surround them. These are living sculptures in a space worthy of them and enough to inspire devotion in any visitor.