BlackHairedGenie’s Version:
Foamy waves teased the beach. There was a buzz of activities along the shore. The ancient South Indian monolithic temples towered over the clusters of tourists. The bedazzling golden sand almost stunned the landscape with its contrast against the clear sunny blue sky. Peanut-sellers, peddlers, curious urchins, cotton candy man and the black temple structures… all perfectly framed within the sky and the sea.
A lady clad in a bright yellow saree, walked upto us. She had betel-stained lips, and she wore gold bangles. Every little item on her person protested in loud colors, against her shiny ebony skin. She was a palm-reader. She insisted on predicting our futures, even though we weren’t too keen to know what was in store for us. But then again, the prospect of getting to know about the future just for a nominal fee… now, that was enticing. We eventually gave in to her beguiling smooth talks. One of us would become rich, one of us would become famous. One of us would be happy in love, one of us would be blessed with children. She said everything that we wanted to hear, in her Tamil drawl, slowly examining our palms. By the end of the exercise, we were poorer by 20 rupees.
Coarse ochre grains grazed my shins while I drew meaningless wet patterns on the sand. She sat in silence, a little way off, watching the sea in rapt awe. After a tiresome journey into the inlands of Pondicherry and red-soiled Auroville, through non-stop rains, on wobbly bicycles and septic buses, we were quite relieved to be here. We were vagabonds, both of us. In our own respective ways, of course. While one wandered within her own self, the other yearned to see the world. It was a lazy yet perfect moment.
LoneDanger’s Version:
Mahabalipuram is unabashedly a tourist town, so I was prepared for a touristy main course along with a garnish of genuine history. If you want to experience bit of the distant past – and a well-known past at that – you must be prepared to jostle with people who might share – or claim to share – your passion. You may, for a small moment in your existense share your life with hyperactive teenagers who – held hostages by factors such as mobile phones and movies and raging hormones – find everything excessively exciting. You may also share your life with comfortable uncles and aunties who find everything – including teenagers – disagreeable.
I saw a surprisingly large number of camera-toting foreigners in Mahabalipuram, admiring the architecture and probably silently cursing the heat and flies and spicy food. Most of the foreigners perpetually wear a look of vague discomfort on their faces in this country. Perhaps they are as homesick as I was when I was doing time outside India. The squat red-faced camera-slinging man listening with a profound expression to the guide explaining the merits of a sculpture could well be thinking, “I wonder if Ricky lets the cat out every night and feeds it that bowl of milk, the absent-minded dupe…speaking of which – hey, it’s Superbowl Sunday!…heck, I wonder if the Patriots will miss the playoffs again…hey, why am I suddenly thinkin’ of Janet Jackson?…” But before he can figure out why he suddenly connected Janet Jackson with the Superbowl, he becomes aware that his tour group is walking again to another sculpture and hears his wife saying, “Must get those earrings for Wendy. She said she will wear it to school and cause a riot, the dear.”
If you are sufficciently discerning and can separate the wheat from the chaff, you may find Mahabalipuram an enjoyable place. For that matter, even if you cannot separate the wheat from the chaff, you may find Mahabalipuram vaguely enjoyable. We reached there on a Tuesday evening in the hope that we would bump into fewer tourists – for we had few hopes of avoiding them altogether. What captivated me first on arrival was not the clutch of monoliths, but the sea. It was a clear sunny day. When I lifted my head and saw the deep blue, I wondered if I had been transported into a tourist brochure for a space and time. Or if I was in one of those dreams that always elude us in real life, when for once all is perfect and there is a meaning and a resolution for everything in our troubled lives. Perhaps, at least on this day, God was present up there in the deep blue of the firmament and the expanse in front of me, as much as he was present inside those centuries-old monoliths along the shore. I stood transfixed for a few minutes, lost in wonder, utterly alone yet comfortably not lonely, feeling the gentle breeze on my face and the warmth of the setting sun behind me, hearing the sounds of wave upon wave, seemingly random but oh so carefully orchestrated.
