A weekend by the sea ...

After a long week of rebellious planning and last minute hitches and change in schedules, we managed to find ourselves on a bus that took us to our weekend adventure spot - Mahabalipuram. Before I could talk of all the fun we had, I must.... shall we say ...pause in awe to gape at the grandeur and mystery that shrouds the place.
No one knows for sure when or how or even for what Mahabalipuram came into existence. Oh! It slipped my mind to tell you what you would find in Mahabalipuram. It is a rough green sea lashing ceaselessly against black rocks and sun colored sandy shores. Along the coast are excavated temples and cave temples which stand as timeless testimonies to the superiority of the ancient Pallava dynasty's architectural consummacy. With a shift in the sea lines and perhaps an unforeseen catastrophe, a large part of these monuments got entirely submerged, not in the sea but in the sand! Because of this a major part of the intricate carvings and sculptures are eroded and what is left behind is a hazy clue of what they must have set out to depict.
You don't need to know about the smoky history that adds to the magical flavor of Mahabalipuram to enjoy it. However, when I came back from my trip to blog about it... I decided I must know a little more about Mahabalipuram. So I did some web research (not much though) to rediscover the enigma that Mahabalipuram is. It was then that I felt ... that had I done this internet look up prior to my trip, I could have better appreciated it (not that I didn't enjoy it).
OK! That cursory salute to all my high school history teachers would have made all their stuffed souls happy. Now to the trip! It was in the early hours of a cool and crisp morning that we set out. As soon as we landed at Mahabalipuram we had a light breakfast to keep our minds off such mundane things as the rumblings of a grouchy acidic stomach. We then headed straight to the biggest of the excavated temples. It is a huge temple made out of a single rock, standing solemnly in a large and deep pit cut out to better reveal the long sculpted treasure. Like a seashell singing the secret depths of the soul of the ocean, the walls and the stones were almost humming the tune of a long forgotten tale colored by the pangs of pain in waiting for someone ... someone who would listen to them. It was as if the whole temple was desperate to tell you something ... if you would only listen. Oh my God! What an experience. There were three shrines and each held an idol of a God in the most unusual posture ... all of them like clues in a treasure hunt or pieces in a bigger puzzle. I could have sat there all day long, had it not been for the boisterous sea calling out to the kid in me. Oh! I simply cannot keep from the waves...
All around the temple, in the direction of the sea ... a long stretch of mighty black boulders were thrown in to keep the sea at bay (an attempt to save the findings from further future damage). We decided that we would climb high on the boulders and sit there for a while looking far into the green sea ... chatting and cracking jokes and of course ponder upon the meaning of life ;-) Salted by the peppery sea breeze and made crisp by the warm sun we recollected all our student days. When I could hold myself no longer ... we got down and went into the waters. Or rather I went in and the rest, preferring to stay dry sat on a lower rock to continue chit-chatting. I had a whale of a time. It’s a totally unexplainable feeling when your body rocks with the waves. It’s like you're a part of it and at the same time you're not. Only when I had enough and had a call from home (some how parents have the instinct that tells them when they need to panic, even when their children are miles away on a supposedly safe outing near the beach. Mind you it was not long before we had the tsunami here.) with my mother checking in on me did I walk out of the waters to lay on the rock to get myself dry. She knows too well how irresistible the sea is to me.
After changing into a new pair of clothes we moved over to the cave temples, not far from the sea. You have got to be there to see what I am talking of. There are numerous caves amidst a cluster of small rocky hills. On each one of these hills was a temple beckoning you to climb up to them. Most of them have no humanly mitigable path that leads to them. We felt like a bunch of explorers who for the first time are treading fresh grounds, discovering never before seen wonders. Puffing, panting and laughing we went up and down the mountainous hills looking into every cave we came across and stopping before every shrine we passed. Finally we climbed the highest hill and lay there roasting in the sun (just to catch all the lost breath) for quite some time.
I guess it must have been the primitive urgings of the base growls from the bottom most pits of our stomachs that pushed us down to the lower realms of earth in search of organic edible substance made fit to eat. And so we drove back home from there dreaming of good food!