Harihareshwar Diaries !

We drive on. Only mildly conscious of the fast accumulating empty packets of chips in the car. I felt full and oil rich, that I could have given an Arab shiek and all his oil wells a run for his money !

In sometime we spot a couple who have stopped their car and clicking pictures. I roll down the window, put on a sprightly smile and ask, ‘Harihareshwar?’. Upon which the lady turns away and the man, points in the direction of the road and says ‘One temple three Gods’ and turns away too. If the lady lacked social skills and the man was a veritable Dale Carnegie.

As the car noses its way in the direction the man pointed, I wonder how well programmed the man is. Sounding like a 3-in-1 offer announcer ! Viewing everything through the lens of the neighbourhood discount store. I imagined him in his fat car. Queing up. Responding to an offer that goes like : ‘Come on Wednesday afternoon, buy Rs.1000 of stuff, swipe you xyz debit card, and get one kilogram of sugar free!’

As has been our case on this trip, we miss the turn to the temple yet again. After a few kilometers more kilometers and no temple we check with a vilager. He has far better social skills. He looks at us with great sympathy and could have almost welcomed us into his home and conducted a prayer meeting at our loss : of missing the temple ‘a full four kilometers behind’ us. I felt like Columbus. Atleast I thought this is how he felt.

We drive back. To discover the temple signboard sunk in maze of other signboards of resorts and such else. We drive on, and finally reach the pristine temple.

I was mentally prepared for a crowd. Temples of Shiva and temples of Vishnu, by themselves are very crowded. Generally. I was visualising serpentine queues, dour faced priests, sullen policemen who stand and redraw patterns on the floor with lathis, only to life their head up now and then, to let go of a ‘keep moving’ in respective local language, and get back to that life giving activity of floor sketching.

But much to my surprise, none of it was to be seen here. No people. No priests. No policemen. Just us and the trimurative company of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma! Down a flight of stairs and a huge mirror later they are there. We were alone with them. The silence and the peace was so loud that I can still hear it !

Thats when a man carrying a broom walks in. Swish Swash. Swish Swash he goes. He suddenly looks up at us, and says '5000 years'.

'5000 ?' I cant believe this ! He rattles off a discourse with such élan and such a straight face, that he could have been doing the weather forecast on national television. He goes ‘swish swash’ with his broom. The only words that I catch are ‘Agastya’ and ‘Pandavas’. We say our prayers in silence. When I open my eyes, the brooms swish swash is close to me. Another moment, and I would have had a scrub down, in front of the almighty.

The peace and quiet catch me by so much surprise. What is the world doing ? I wonder if it would have been any different if it was just a Shiv temple or a just a Vishnu temple or just a Brahma temple ! Perhaps this sort of coalition rule didn’t appeal to folks of the yesteryear!

With no amusement park, mall or multiplex, it made sense to occupy your children with going to three different temples in four different directions. Imagine if the pest of the kid in the house comes here, and finishes praying to all three Gods at one go and has four days to spare !

There is a pradakshina way, which you can walk around. Except that its not necessarily a stroll in a park. It’s a flight rock cut steps up, a flight of rock cut steps down which leads you to the sea, and around a hill. You have to walk around the hillock, in the sea ! Today the rains have uprooted a few trees and they have brought along with with some electric poles and wires !

The missus has been watching ' mindless stunts in 'Who Dares Wins' and 'Khatron Ki Khiladi' purses her lips ! She isn’t going to come along she says. I mutter a swear at those silly programs replete with demented stunts like burying your armpit with bees and such else. I don’t know if that particular stunt was there, but I have heard of far worse. So.

Today, there is high tide, and we aren’t allowed any further we aren’t allowed to venture in to walk in the sea ! At precisely the spot which the mighty Bheem ( of the Pandava fame ) is supposed to have split the giant rock into two, temple folks have erected a gate that says ‘stay here’. Or something to that effect.

We trudge down the way we climbed up. Admiring the simplicity of the place !

Fly by night swamijis would have ashrams with security cabins as big as this temple ! Other temples a fraction of its lineage have a dubious dimwit running the devasthanom and money making schemes that would put a corporate marketer to shame.

We linger here. Its nice. The world hasn't completely to the dogs. We just sit there. And the dog there, gives us a very sympathetic happy look.

Harihareshwar Diaries !

Herd Wisdom !

One of those days, we drive. From Diveagar to Shriwardhan. It’s a nice drive. As is typical of me, I am unsure of the way ahead. We look around, alight from the car and walk a bit. The landscape is inviting. We aren’t keen on arriving at Shriwardhan ‘on time’. We are just headed in that direction.

We look around.

He walks by. He. His goats. His calfs, cows and buffalos. Bermuda shorts. T-Shirt. Baseball cap turned backwards, as a baseball player would. Umbrella. A huge stick that could almost excite an amateur pole vaulter. A tan on the skin and weary twinkle in the eye.

He squints at us enquiringly !

I ask him, ‘Shriwardhan ?’

Before I could complete, he says in what seems to be indifferent yet focused tone : ‘Go straight and stay on the right’. The speed and ease, combined with the seeming ease of getting there by just 'going straight and staying on the right', for 20 odd kilometers dont add up in my educated mind.

Truth be told, i dont know if he is telling me or this is a standard instruction for his cows and buffaloes !

I repeat, using my professed urban intelligence : ‘Shriwardhan’. Slowly. Like a teacher of a English pronunciation class working on a group of students who have studied through Tamil medium.

“ Shriii-Wardhan ????”…

He replies with a tinge of irritation and a twang of dismissal. Accompanied with a body language which lets me know that I asked the way to Shriwardhan and not to the South Pole. “Go straight. Stay on the right”

He speaks Marathi which the missus struggles to pick up, much evident from her furrowing eyebrows. A couple of staccato sentence exchanges. She translates. ‘The scenery is beautiful, he says, but he urges us to go straight and stay on the right’

He moves on. Tending to disobedient cow and the svelte buffalo with swagger. We drive on too. Driving by such splendid scenery as I can ever imagine.

Roads. Greens. Sea. Roads with a view. And a view with no roads. Of cattle. Of boats. Occasionally of people. And of course, of bobbing fishing boats in every fishing hamlet !

In some time, we reach Shriwardhan. A simple quaint and wonderful place.

That evening, I walk by the sea thinking of the day that’s been. The waves rush to shore, dissipating into nothingness, at the speed at which they arrive. A smile escapes my lips. Thinking of us, our lives, our strifes and such else, much like the waves in perpetual quest of the shore.

A dog runs by giving me a sympathetic look. Bubble crabs run all around the sand. A few kids are wading into to the water.

For some reason, the mind races to a svelte buffalo twitching its dirty tail. Just as a voice rings in the ear : 'Go straight and stay on the right’ !

A pause and a full minute later, i realise that is sure something to keep in mind.

Sure !

Herd Wisdom !

Suvarna Ganesh !

Some years back someone found a huge copper box in his backyard. 'It was in the backyard of a lady named Draupadi'. It was a copper box. I am no chemistry student and I have no idea how and if copper can survive 1000 years. But that’s the story. And quite a credible one at that. Ok ?

That’s atleast what the man sitting next to the priest at the Suvarna Ganesh temple in Divegar tells us with an equal nonchalance to the other big activity that occupies him : swatting flies.

With some swagger after swatting two big flies, he tells me ‘no photographs’. In a dry, desultory and dismissive tone that must have sure given great glee to the flies.

So, no pictures of whats inside the temple people. But heres an amateurish attempt at description.

The copper box sits pretty. Yes, the same one that was discovered. Its like an army man’s trunk. Today, the copper box sits inside a glass box ! If it could withstand the vagaries of the planet for a 1000 years, I don’t see how that glass box was going to add any protection.

Then it strikes me that now the box is dealing with human beings and it wont take a minute for a love struck Anand Anybody to carve out the name of Sumita Somebody!! Yeah. The glass box indeed makes sense.

Somewhere above, there ensconced in another glass cabinet is what they found inside the copper box : A 22 carat idol of Lord Ganesh ! Weighing more than a Kilogram and made of solid gold ! A kilo of pure gold !

As I stare at the idol and seem to think of it more as a mask to an idol that must have been there sometime, a voice hisses into my year : ‘A 1000 years’. Unsolicited personalized commentary with gesticulation warranting the 1000 to be multiplied by five. I smile a weak smile.

The sheer thought of someone making this, that many years back, stuns me into steep silence. I continue staring. A 1000 years back ! How did the men and women back then, have the idea to build something like this ? Only to put it in a box?

Was the town under attack or something? Was it a gang of masked hoodlums who stole it from somewhere and forgot where they hid it? Or was it a Ganesh propogation society ? Could be!

I realize that it sure must have been a ‘Mackennas Gold’ moment for the chap that discovered the treasure in 1998! Wouldn’t it be? In a jiffy, my mind races back to thinking what would have been the reaction of the folks that opened box and seeing the idol of solid gold? How different would the reaction been, if all they found was a battered cycle tyre or something like that ? Anyway, they discovered. Well and truly so !

Anyway, here is a list of stuff that’s inside the temple ! A ganesh idol made of stone, and kept inside a cage like structure. ( Don’t ask me why ). Thats the main deity. The golden ganesh in another glass cabinet. Some assorted jewellery that they found in the copper box. A clock. A trophy.

(A small trophy like the ones that I used to compete for in arbid school elocution contests on topics that shaped my career, like ‘If I became Prime Minister’). Don’t ask me what a small trophy is doing in the Ganesh temple. It is there.

The temple itself is small and non descript. We missed the temple as we drove past it, looking for a building of prominence. But simple structures are the essence of this place.

But heres the big piece : Its PEACEFUL and leaves an indescribable feeling of calmness. We are there on Ganesh Chaturti. But there isn’t much of a crowd. A small assortment of people and ofcourse the swatted flies. We amble around.

Outside the temple there is a big black ape shaped dustbin, with ‘Use Me’ written on. In the opposite side of the road is a small temple for Hanuman with asbestos roofing and all of that, beyond which is the green fields and blue mountains! That’s about the temple. Peaceful. Simple. Serene.

We shuffle our feet out of the temple, with another couple and their wailing son. Tourists like us. I hear the wife ask her husband : ‘Whats the latest price of a tola of gold?’ ! The husband whips out his phone, presumably to check.

Our feets shuffle out in a hurry.

Suvarna Ganesh !

Diveagar diaries !

Diveagar is about 200 kilometers from here. After weaving through all the traffic, insignificant seeming roads and amply aided by inconspicuous road signs that you mistake for signs leading upto something like a failed undergarment factory keen on hiding failure !

We did get to Dive Agar. Was like a treasure hunt and it indeed is a treasure ! It’s a small place. A gram panchayat. That must settle it. But for all of those that need more explanation : imagine simple dwellings. Small lanes. People sitting in their front yards, most of which is the road itself. Some of them viewing you as though you are riding a kangaroo with three legs and big moustache !

But then, they really are simple people. Simple Minds. Simple Homes. Simpe egos and such else. A home that caught my attention on the way, was the one you see below which was more exotic than the most of what those big builders offer. ( At prices that could well maket me a bonded labourer for three generations)

How would it be to retire here. With the grassland as your garden, real mountain as a wall paper !

For a big city officianado, frankly, there is nothing to do here. That sentence reads as ‘no malls here’. Those malls with parking lots and attendants who guide the cars into parking bays imagining themselves to be Air Traffic Controllers guiding an aircraft on to its parking bay. Those were 200 kilometers behind us.

The claim to fame of Diveagar is its beach. That beach is long and clean. But more important to me, is that it is a few kilometers of COMMERCE FREE ZONE! No candy. No ground nut. No silly target practice with a bunch of balloons and bent air guns, with which you cant hit a target as big as buffalo on growth hormones, not to think of those small oddly shaped balloons.

There were no swank cars. No ice creams the size of cauliflowers. No groundnut vendors. No gola. No Pav bhaji. Nothing. Just the beach and its sand bubbler crabs !

Ah. One exception. Just one old chap on a carriage pulled by horse look alikes. And no takers. We were content walking barefeet that we politely declined his offer for a ride on the beach. The horse look alikes seemed to nod and neigh in great happiness, and I strongly suspect they managed to look at our pizza powered bulges through the corners of their blinkers.

The little of the tourists that we saw, were more like us. Thankful to walk and spare the horse look alikes religiously, that we could have applied for some award sponsored by SPCA or someone of that ilk. Some time soon, the horse cart was out of sight !

It was such a relief. The only murmur and occasional shout, came from the waves and the breeze. All else was silent! The waves themselves leaving patterns on the beach which could take up all of the hard disk space on my camera !

The sun dance was spectacular, to say the least. Playing hide and seek with such élan that at one point, the missus repeated a line that she has a particular way of saying. She has said it enough times in the recent past and I usually interpret it as ‘danger’.

‘Its either the camera or me’. I stopped. Obviously.

Diveagar diaries !

We drove !

We drove. It was getting to us. All elements of big city living. All we needed was some quiet. So we drove. In the fond hope that would get some peace and quiet as the rest of Mumbai screamed in the holy name of Allah and Ganpati !

Armed with an array of music on an ipod borrowed from the father-in-law, resting on the direction powers of google maps, with just the two of us for company, we drove.

Unlike in a romantic movie, we drove straight into traffic.

It seemed like an exodus of sorts, for there were that many cars on the road. All intent on getting out of town. Hundreds of Tata Sumos, Taveras and the like, each with half a village packed in, and all their belongings packed on the roof ! Suitcases. Pots. Bags. Chairs. Cycles. Rice bags. We suspect that there were cows and buffallos up there too, that we didn’t see! Enough, in my opinion to last a travel to Jupiter and back !

It was quite like a Hollywood movie with aliens attacking the city and everybody moving out of town !

We then hit pristine highways. National highways that at some points could be well termed as notional highways. And state highways in such a state of disrepair, that it must be blamed on some other state ! By and large (make that LARGE), the roads were inviting with undulations and scenery that we only get to see in big budget movies!

But the drive was worth it ! The Konkan coast is beautiful!

We drove through hills and beaches. Through small towns and smaller hamlets. Chatted up with fisher folk, caught up with cow herds, asked directions from kids playing by the roadside and their burqa clad moms. All of whom responded with so much precision, kindness and care that it was an education in manners for us. And it was coming for free !!

The waves seem to dance in unbelievable style and synchrony, leaving patterns on the sand that would make designer salivate ! We saw off the sun. We walked as far as the eye could see. Stopping by streams and drinking off roadside taps! We zipped by elegant simple village dwellings that made some of the city high rises appear as straight out of ‘Architecture for dummies’ !

We stopped by long forgotten bridges, only to be looked at by the villagers as through we were from the Public Works Department ! All that remained was them handing over a petition to us !

Ofcourse, we saw the Ganpati festival in small village homes, where they were more than glad to have us ! Unspoilt, homely and simply nice ! Devoid of Salman Khan songs and Rakhi Sawant gyrations that adorn the Mumbai Ganpati mandals ! Ramzan in village surroundings was so much more simpler, quieter yet so much more splendid !

There are hundreds pictures. Some of it will make it to the blog here! And stories ofcourse ! Stories of a 5000 year old temple. A 5 Km long clean beach with less than 5 couples on it ! Stories of gold and treasure chests told in hushed tones with elaborate hand movements that made us wonder if we were state guests !

Bear with me people ! As I share the excitement ! Look out for blog posts not only on all of the above, but also on mentally stimulating topics like ‘how to endure a traffic jam’ !

Actually, I was in two minds about writing about the ‘serene’ experience. Not wanting to give the place any more publicity than they have now! Wondering if the writing would fuel more people visiting the place and spoil the tranquil.

The missus, inbetween cups of coffee chipped in, ‘Remember, people read your blog out of politeness. Don’t mistake it for following’ !

That sealed it. People, you will hear from me !

We drove !

Morning ripples !

The Powai lake right here in Mumbai offers some of the most pristine e sights. Peace like a Buddhist monastery. Tranquil like a double dose of valium. And beauty like a professional photographers frame. Its just there.

On one side there is a hotel called Renaissance! (Let me not talk of irony or whatever). On other there side is the Indian Institute of Technology. On another there is a bustling road, teaming with traffic that can compete with any road for ‘The most snarl prone road in the world award’.

The bustling road opens into a residential neighbourhood which boasts of wealth (residents would file a defamation suit against me, if I hazard a guess about the quantum of wealth! For I am sure I will be off the mark by many marathon kilometers !)

Of course, the one remaining side remains what it was. Untouched. By and large.

Along the bustling road, the government and some well thinking folks have built a park and a joggers track along the banks of the lake. Complete with concrete, spaces for flower beds, children's parks et al ! All for development you see.

It usually provide a lovely setting . A good run, looking at the hills afar, is always soothing. Blokes like me catch a run in the morning. Children soak in some shrieks of laughter in the evening. The elderly sing a few notes from memory as the moisture laden Powai air comes alive by the lake !

The lake also comes alive when its festival time. Where articles and idols that were worshipped are immersed ! Last years Ganpati Visarjan for instance, saw huge cranes help the immersion ! it’s a natural process, you see.

The IIT holds bustling thought for the future minds. In this case, there seems to have been a persistent afterthought as well !!

That’s the setting. You get the idea ! Don’t you.

Today, I run. With a lazy drizzle, muffled huffs and puffs, early morning traffic and such else for constant company! From a distance its such a pristine sight. The lake. At least one side of it. With hills and their reflection.

Today, I try and keep the buildings and their reflections away from my sight. Somehow, the hills afar seem prettier..

It is at that time I see him. Majestic and beautiful like a royal monarch inspecting his army.

I stop on my tracks. Open mouthed. Half from the run. The rest on just seeing him. I just stand and watch.

A crocodile.

A few feet away from me. Slicing through water like knife through butter. A small crowd gathers. Mostly staring. Some incessantly chatting. A lady mutters – ‘they should do something about this’.

I notice that I am nodding my head. I notice my nodding stops and my open mouth opens further, like a crocodile would, upon hearing her next statement.

"They cant let such animals live near our homes !" she says.

She could well have been a spokesperson for the crocs ! And spoken the same lines for the crocs as well.

As I stand watching the croc glide away, a shudder goes down my spine ! I wonder what I would say, if my home was encroached on by the buffalo and the bumblebee ! (Despite my home loan)

I stand there. Seeing him glide away. Hoping he will understand the pain and sense of loss some of us share. About his loss and ours too.

He continues gliding away. Somewhere in the middle of the lake where the hotel's 'Renaissance' signboard's reflection glistens in the morning waters of the otherwise still lake, is where he pauses and disappears.

There are silent ripples. That distort the reflection of 'The Renaissance'. Perhaps reflective of us and our renaissance !

Morning ripples !