Soul of India : Part 2

In continuation with the Previous post, referenced as below:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/soul-india-1-ullas-ponnadi

This narration is an attempt to document observations and allow me to ask open ended questions and not bring in my inferences. However, a human being is emotional, and those will weave subtly, in all art forms they engage with. Phrases and sentences, sans emotions, cannot tell a powerful story, and this article is also a story of a personal experience!

Let me begin with the recent travel I and Mini(wife) did, Feb 2023, over a five-day period to Tamil Nadu, covering a few of the temple towns. Travelling by train both ways, we got down at Trichy and took the train back from Thanjavur, a daily train, that runs through the heart of Tamil Nadu. Our travel covered Trichy, Kumbakonam and Thanjavur, a fascinating and rich belt of the history of Tamil Nadu, and one that is also now highlighted in the Block buster movie, PS1 and PS2.

This was a long pending travel, delayed by Covid for about a year. We both were fascinated by these regions of Tamil Nadu, a state in South India, that has extremely rich history and culture, a language that is possibly one of the most ancient(Tamil) and a state in India today that has the most industries in India.

Over the five days, we covered a few ancient temples, some thousands of years old, experienced traditional food across the region, tasted the finest coffee and savories, met a seventh-generation silk saree weaver, and stumbled upon a French couple, who seem eternally fascinated with India!

Let me split this narration into two parts, the first being a glimpse of history, and the second being what we currently experienced, as culture, people, and warmth.

As I had written in my first article, the regions we covered were once the pride of the Chola and Pandya dynasty, one of those long-standing dynasties that spanned 1000+ years, and created some of the best administrative, social, and spiritual practices along the years. Quoting the Internet :

“Cholas occupied South East Asian Countries and had the most powerful army and navy of the world at that time. Pandyan Kingdom was located in Tamil Nadu, South India. It started around 6th century BC and ended around the 15th century AD.1”

The remnants of their rule can now be experienced via the numerous temples that they built, across this belt of Tamil Nadu. Temples that have withstood all vagaries of nature, all stone and hard granite, interlocked and no mortar at all. A mystery still, to the modern-day engineers.

The Thanjavur Big Temple, has Lord Shiva as the deity, constructed by?Chola?King?Rajaraja Chola?1 during his reign from 985-1012 A.D. is a marvel that took?about 15 years?to complete. UNESCO has declared it as a World Heritage Monument.

In addition, the art forms like murals, exquisite colors, ornamental and theme-based structures, and elements of music embedded in such temple constructions, are also unique.

They primarily worshipped Vishnu(the sustainer) and Shiva(the destroyer) and hence the temples are all various forms of these Trinities, the main Gods of Hindu Philosophy. The other is Brahma, the creator, for whom temples are sparse, and there is a story behind that, which I will leave for another article.

These regions have hundreds of temples, built across centuries, and it is impossible to cover them all, in the time we had. We thus chose the most important historical ones. Should I list the temples we visited? I think that would not do justice, since we only covered about 6 temples in total, all exquisite, beautifully maintained and preserved, the sanctity well preserved, and where we also tasted some of the best ?prasadams (food prepared in the temple as an offering to the deity) at rock bottom price! Fortunately, our visit was not during peak season, and that helped. In one such temple, I saw a student of History, with a book and an open page, standing against a pillar of the temple with carvings, examining minutely what he found and what was written in his book. I spoke with him, and he said he was working on a mini project assignment, related to that temple.

Now that we have covered the history of these regions and were time transported by a few thousand years, what did I and Mini experience, in the present? Did history influence people and their attitude and behavior in any manner? Did the traditions continue? Did the warmth of people, and the cuisine, reflect the past in some ways? Was there anything unique in our experience, as compared to the other regions of India that we visited? And what then would decide the future of such a region?

Let me leave all that to the next part of this series. History, via experiences, over time, can get into human’s genes and DNA, in a slow and subtle manner. Did that happen? That is left to Part-3 of this series.

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