A Serious Relief, Continued.

Saturday the 14th, Part 2

After spending time at The Great Relief site, we loaded the vans back up and headed about a mile down through the little town towards the beach for a visit to the Shore Temple. The town of Mamallapuram reminded me a bit of Tijuana Border in that it was crammed packed with rickety stands that sold souvenirs and random trinkets for probably double their worth. Clearly Mamallapuram is a tourist destination for Indians and foreigners a like.

The moment we got out of the van a tremendously cute little boy began trying to sell us very unfashionable beaded necklaces. I couldn’t take my eyes off the kid, something about they way in which his small raspy voice wanted 500 rupees then 100 rupees then 250 rupees revealed how little he knew what he was doing. It really pained me to ignore him as he followed our group the gate of the Shore Temple asking each one of us to buy the necklaces he had draped from his little arms. He seemed used to it, but it broke my heart. I know that there are children that live in practically the same situation in the States, but by no means are there so many of them. It reminds me of a side of India that is so easy to forget when all that is so good about the country has swept me off my perpetually dirty feet. The reality is that this country, like almost every country, has terrible problems. The little boy outside the Shore Temple lives a good life compared to a good deal of children in India, but what about his schooling or his chance to succeed in life? I guess this is a subject for another time… something I can’t forget about but also can’t get stuck on.

Back to the Shore Temple!

It was brilliant, of course. What I find to be the coolest part about this particular temple is the fact that it is the last standing of 5 (?) temples, the rest are submerged below the surface of the sea. The other four can be visited by catamaran on days that the local fisherman don’t find inauspicious or dangerous, which was the case for us. L

This particular shore temple had both a Siva and Visnu shirne. Apparently, the Visnu shrine was built first but when Sivists came into power they built a bigger shrine to Siva in front of Visnu to block him from being as easily recognized. This happens all the time in temples… instead of tearing down a temple built to a different deity, Indians simply build bigger shrines to other deities in front of the original one. India is so passive aggressive, I love it.

After our visit to the Shore Temple, we checked into Hotel InDeco. The hotel was a super cool experience, it felt like it had been a really nice resort around 30 years ago but had been abandoned and then the night before we got there the staff went around removing coverings from all the furniture and cleaning all our rooms and making our beds with fresh sheets for our arrival. I’m sure it wasn’t like that, and it did seem to be kept up quite nicely… but that’s the type of impression I got from the place. There were old artifacts from the age of British Colonization everywhere and everything seemed outdated and old but in an intentional way.

We had breakfast (or second breakfast? Hot Breads were eaten at around 4am so they don’t count) then napped then had Lunch. Everything was served buffet style. I have one problem with Indian food, and that is that it is just all too damn good. I was waddling after lunch I was so full, but how can you turn down any dish that you know is vegetarian, you have never had before, and could easily never have again in your life?  You can’t.

After lunch we were supposed to go on a boat to find the other sunken shore temples, but Archana said that every fisherman told her that it was an astrologically inauspicious day to go to sea… whatever that means. As much of a big bummer it was to not go boating on the Bay of Bengal, we instead had an awesome shopping excursion to this little crafting village where we got to see and meet the people who made tapestries, stone carvings, reed carvings, bangles, pots, jewelry, and a bunch of other things. It was a pretty cool experience and I was able to pick up a few things for family members.

After the craft village we went home for dinner, almost died of food comas, Alexa and I walked down to the beach to dip our feet in the water and freak out over how lucky and psyched we were to be in India, went back to our room, took (cold)  showers, and passed out.

How auspicious is my life right now??