Khajuraho / Panna

Panna / Khajuraho

The long drive –
Starting at 5 in the morning
Anticipation of how things will be
Will we see a tiger?
how do the statues of khajuraho
Look in real life?
Enroute the road is bumpy,
There are people collecting
some golden flower on the roads
after many many kilometres of
the same we decide to stop
and ask what they are collecting.
Mauha we are told, a flower
which has a sweet rotting smell
used to make liquor
we are told.
Kali remembers poems from school
where the poet yearns of his hometown
and the sweet smell of Mauha.
Not for us we decide. The smell of
a few flowers picked by us lingers in
the car as we drive on.

Finally at Panna,
The non descript looking
Tourist hut, with the nagging doubts
creeping into our minds
will the kids be comfortable
in the heat?
Maybe that is where it all started,
And what made it worse was
the lack of water.
And I wanted them to
rough it out !!
Then the watermelon cheered us up some,
And the thought of cooling at the waterfall
Cheered us some more.

Raneh Falls –
The road to which was more of a
dust track and less of a road,
the car caked in mud
bones rattled by the potholes in
the road that never was.
And all of a sudden we were there.
The big stretch of crevasses
Which were dry due to the
Drought of last year.
But the falls were breath taking
In their ruggedness
The stones in their dry weathered look
400 million years old is what the guide
told us; another 400 million they will survive,
watching time flow.
A year of drought and another of flood
The flow of time continues
And the rocks stand firm.

Panna Safari –
Wake up wake up
We need to start early
for the safari, else the heat
will get us and the animals will
hide under the shade.
First ones to enter the Park we were,
The cool wind, the open jeep,
And above all the anticipation
Of spotting a Tiger !
A cup of coffee and we were ready to go.
The Jungle trail, eyes peeled for
Spotting the Tiger, and STOP says the guide
There if you look, you will see a Peacock,
And he gets ‘oh just a Peacock…’ and we tell
him we are from Gwalior where Peacocks
dance on our rooftops and gardens.
The jeep continues, and chotu spots the
first spotted deer. We pause,
the driver shuts down the engine,
we hear the mating calls of the spotted deer
and the happy call of the monkeys
the sounds of the forest
so different from the thundering sounds
of ‘first take off’ at the break of dawn.
There is an odd sort of serenity
to the picture; the calm hides
the harsh life of the forest.
Yet, for us people,
people from cities and towns,
it is the calm which is far from
the noise, crowd and rat race
of our everyday lives.
The sun starts bearing down on us
and the kids are the first to accept
that is is becoming hot.
Adu decides it is time to sleep,
and we parents decide it is time to head back.
The guide is still positive
that we may spot a Tiger,
but by now the heat has made us
realists and we decide to get back home.
The guides Optimism seems
funny to us, especially after
he says that the last spotting
was more than a month ago.
Deep down I wonder,
Is Panna going the Sariska way?
On the way back we ponder
If it is better for the Tiger
to be in a Zoo, safe and secure,
assured of its next meal; and
more important – assured
that it wont hang
on some maniacs wall?
Or, is Freedom more important
than the fact that its meal
is not assured, it has to earn it
the hard way; and even though
it is the king of the jungle,
it is never too far away from
the greedy eyes of a poacher?
Important philosophy of life
If you see it,
Applicable to all of us,
Life is all about choices
And there are no black or white
choices, only shades of grey.
freedom or life? Which would I Chose?

Khajuraho –
We decide to move on
from the heat of Panna
and find some more luxurious
accommodation in Khajuraho
our plans of roughing it out
have been vetoed by the
discomfort of our children.
An air conditioned accommodation
And after a short nap all of us feel better
And more of a fool for trying
To rough it out in the Madhya Pradesh heat !
The Southern and Eastern group of temples
is the plan for the evening.
The guide is called and we move
through some dusty by lanes,
wondering why the tourism department
does not spend the money it gets
in building up the infrastructure
and promote more tourism.
The roads are dusty and
we crawl through khajuraho
to get to our first temple.
The temple is beautiful,
the sculptures exquisite,
and the setting sun makes it
really worthwhile as the shadows
make the sculptures come alive.
The Guide gives us the basic hint,
that all the provocative sculptures
are above the mythical lions sculpture.
We are unlucky to be stuck with
a guide, who thinks people
are only interested in the
sexual poses of the sculptures.
He leaves us alone, which
is good for us, for we don’t need
his crass thought to spoil
the magnificence of the sculptures.
We move from temple to temple
awestruck by the beauty of the
temples; amazed by the fine
artistry and architecture.
How did they build such fine
buildings without the technological
assistance that today’s architects have?
And they did it in quick time,
for, as per the books, the temples
took 3-4 years to build.
Today I don’t think they could make
a road in that region
in less than a decade.
To survive for more than
thousand years….
What I would give to live
through and see how life was
in the golden days of these temples.
How did they look then?
What did people feel about them?
I wish….
To end, I remember what was said in
The light and sound show,
As to why these temples,
places of worship, had
such provocative images on them.
“Life has various stages,
and we have to pass through all of them,
but when we enter gods domain,
the temple
we must leave all those behind
and go in with nothing
but the thought of god in our minds;
which is why the outsides depict
day to day lives, including scenes
depicting sexual acts.
Difficult proposition, but if you
think about it, it makes sense,
in a poetic kind of way.