More Than Just Erotica
Khajuraho, India
The train to Khajuraho is filled with foreigners. These are the enthusiasts who have finished with the Golden Triangle. They are now on to their next big destination.
Khajuraho for me, wasn’t just a destination; it was more of a journey. Many tourists give up the journey half way to Khajuraho and get back to the more peaceful, magical and royal Orchha, unable to endure the five-hour long jolting road journey from Jhansi to Khajuraho. Mostly high-spenders bemoaning the fact that they did not take the direct flight from Agra, Delhi or Varanasi to Khajuraho.
I shared this jolting journey with friends playing mind games. For example: “If you could meet one person from the past, who would it be? (no relatives or friends allowed)” My answer: “Leonardo Da Vinci”. Similar questions and answers took us through the journey, amidst which we annihilated the invention of nuclear weapons, pretended to be Sherlock Holmes and Tintin, lopped off our arms and legs, wiped the earth of politicians, armies and institutions and liberated Tibet from Chinese rule, travelled the universe, created a time machine, rewrote history and witnessed the Big Bang.
Khajuraho has the Vindhya range as a beautiful backdrop and its geographical location subjects it to temperatures soaring above 30°C during the day, even in the winters, though the evenings are very cool. Be sure to carry enough sunscreen if you intend to spend time walking around temples or cycling around the town, as the temples of Khajuraho are spread over an area of 20 square kilometres.
After the Taj, Khajuraho happens to be the prime tourist hot spot, in league with Varanasi and Jaipur for the foreign tourist. And the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation has done an excellent job in promoting tourism in Khajuraho.
It has given the locals their means of livelihood, as at least one member of every family is in the “travel industry.” Every time you ask for any information from any local on the streets or anywhere in Khajuraho it gets translated into a business opportunity for that local. A local can guide you to the taxi driver friend of his, or get you to the restaurant that is linked with the family business, or can sell you a trip to the Panna National Park (a popular part of the circuit) or sell you anything or something before you move on to the next local. This means touts and the hawkers are omnipresent and pester you into paying for an excursion to the national park. Or they try selling you the remarkable “sexy postcards” or “sexy key chains”. Yet it isn’t seedy.
There is something eternal about the place. Not just because of its antiquity, but mainly because it gives visitors a sense of peace, of coming home. A quaint mix of the eclectic with the erotic.
The food, for instance, is world cuisine. Here are innumerable specialty café’s that serve anything from the popular tandoori chicken or the masala dosa to exotic Greek cuisine or Italian food. At the Mediterraneo Restaurant, a Greek delicacy café, a Bengali from Mumbai sat munching a Sicilian Bruschetta amidst the ruins of the most erotic temples of India.
The temples themselves are excellent examples of Indo-Aryan architecture. Of the original 85 temples there remain only 20 today, all conveniently divided into three groups, the Western, Eastern and the Southern group. For a look-see, you would still need at least half a day.
Most of the temples are built of fine sandstone and some of granite. Their grand size amazes any visitor considering that some of them date back to 950 AD and are constructed in a location where there is nothing to endorse the construction spot, except it’s central location. But then again, central to what? The era did not have any rulers and settlements in the area to determine either the center or it’s periphery. So why and where did the workers come from, who were these brilliant sculptors? And what were their reasons for dedicating their efforts and lives to construct and create such monuments embellishing them with delicate stonework with elements of sex and women? There have been many answers and theories to such questions that advocate it as a statement of Tantric or Shakti cults. Others either take refuge in tracing it’s origin to the enduring worship of the Mother Goddess (traced back to 3000 BC). But most have sought refuge from theories and call it the “Kama Sutra” in stone. Puritans call it the result of a “degenerate society obsessed with sex.”
We found one “moral guardian”, our tourist guide, who had the knack of explaining and justifying all his perspectives and certifying them with his qualifications. Of course, whenever we saw anything extraordinarily sexual his conclusion was that it suggested “what not to do”. For him the explicit sexual depictions on rock were about don’ts. For him, it was either good or bad, no grey areas. He replaced the old four tiers of “Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha” to a new model of Hindu philosophy that incorporated “Dharma, Artha, Kama and Ikchha (Ikchha to be roughly translated as “wish”). With his uni-dimensional view, our questions remained unanswered. We wandered along from temple to temple, as he rushed us through each one with a brief history as his time ran out.
History says that the Chandelas, who were Rajputs, ordered and aided the construction of the temples at Khajuraho while they reigned over the area now known as the Bundelkhand region. Most temples were constructed between 950 AD and 1050 AD. These rulers claimed descent from the moon (hence the name Chand-ela). The popular belief that upholds the ruler’s reasons for constructing the temples in general is related to a dream of Chandravarman, the founder of the Chandela dynasty. According to the story and the lunar lineage of these Rajput rulers, Hemwati, the beautiful young daughter of a Brahmin priest was seduced by the Moon God while bathing in the forest lake. The child born of this union was Chandravarman. The boy was raised by his mother enduring a hard life in the forests, as a result of a censorious society. Eventually when Chandravarman himself emerged as a powerful ruler he had a dream in which Hemwati, his mother visited and implored him to build temples that would reveal human passion and while doing so it would bring about the realisation of the emptiness of desire.
The important elaborate and illustrious of these temples are the Lakshmana temple (named after the ruler that built the temple), Kandariya Mahadeva temple, Jagadambi temple, Chitragupta temple, Matangesvara temple and the Chausath Yogini temple.
Is Khajuraho all about cliches? Yes and no. It is still the most erotic architecture in India, but it is so much more than erotica. It is about being and beauty, about now and forever. It is about a journey that has to be made.
