Friday, May 09, 2008

banavasi - one old temple please

an ancient pillar towers out from the earth, a sore middle finger of defiance. sticking it in the face of two and a half millenia, a perennial muggy forecast, untiring invading hordes and the odd graffiti maniac.


all around the madhukeshwara temple, time has overridden an ancient city and all its good sense. but within madhukeshwara's modest perimeter, history puffs on unabated. a time bubble that refuses to be pricked.



two thousand five hundred years! you've got to try and fathom how long that is while you sip on your refrigerated bottled water and simultaneously wonder why your aircon seems to have given up all together. meanwhile all those years ago in banavasi, some royal chap had the native good judgement to build an impressive behemoth of a temple out of stone. while the world swelters outside, inside madhukeshwar it's a lulling cool.

banavasi is not a discernible dot on most maps. a fall from grace for what was once an ancient centre of civilization. while in more far flung circles, man was still crawling on all fours and foraging for berries, closer home in banavasi one of the world's foremost metropolis flourished. perhaps that was hyperbole. but if you were to breathe the wind that still blows through banavasi's only survivor from those times - the madhukeshwara temple, you'd have to say - wooooh.

2 comments:

Hari Adivarekar said...

nice words bugger....for once overshadowing the photos...
it's a compliment although it might sound suspect ;-)

Unknown said...

Thanks for giving an opportunity to see an old temple. Photos are very nice and the narration more nicer.

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