TFQM - APRIL 2012
I have taken one of the northbound trains. Don’t bother looking for me. I’m at peace with myself and my past. I told her once that we would make a pilgrimage to the Himalayas. So that is where I am headed, to the silent mountains, to witness the purity of snow. It was my masterpiece.
PRITI AISOLA
PATALA VINAYAKA
(The following excerpt is from a work of fiction. It is in the form of a longish email. Uma, a woman in her mid-fifties meets Leela, a much younger woman at Ramanashramam in the temple town of Tiruvannamalai. Both have their own trials to face and sorrows to come to terms with. They strike up a friendship. In Leela, Uma begins to find the daughter she lost many years ago to a fatal fever.) Leela, here’s another story for you:
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We had just finished seeing the main temple of Srikalahasti. Shankar, and our friends, wanted to have a cup of tea before heading back towards Tirupati to catch the evening train to Hyderabad. I told Shankar that I was going to look for the Patala Vinayaka shrine which we had missed seeing. On our previous visit, three years back, I recalled visiting the Patala Vinayaka shrine. But the memory of its exact location had vanished from my mind. That evening there was a cloudburst and I had rushed to see the shrine in the downpour while the others had made a dash for the car. For some reason I felt that it was outside the main temple but that’s not true. It is in the second courtyard of the temple, about thirty feet beneath the surface. This is said to mark the level of the Swarnamukhi river that flows by. As I walk farther away from the main temple and the small shops with their snacks, tea and refreshments, I see a small white-washed gopuram in front of me. And to my left is an uneven mud path leading to a doorway. Something tells me that this is not the way to the Patala Vinayaka shrine but I am curious. A little fearful too. Four saffron-robed mendicants stand along the pebbly path with their begging bowls. All of them look weather-harried and a bit scary with their bony burnt-brown faces, jaundiced eyes and unwashed hair in a top knot and long wayward beards. As I approach the doorway uncertainly, a man rushes up to me and asks what I am looking for. I ask him if that is the way to the Patala Vinayaka shrine. He doesn’t answer my question but says that he knows all about the shrines within and he will be my guide. My instinct tells me that the man is a hoax, that I mustn’t step inside, but my curiosity about the place gets the better of me. We go under the doorway and I try not to look at the man whose appearance is making me apprehensive. Dressed in a shabby white shirt and a threadbare veshti, he is thin, almost bony. Creased and burnt by the sun, his facial skin stretches over his high cheek bones. Through slit-like eyes, he tries to read my expressions, my body language. Though taut with anxiety, I pretend an interest in his narrative about Srikalahasti. By now I know that I am in the wrong
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August 27, 2011