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From Shakti Maira's book
Hampi is spread across 10 square kilometres and is built on the banks of the Tungabhadra River... It was the capital of the Vijayanagar kingdom, the genesis of modern Karnataka. Three powerful dynasties, from the 14th to the 17th centuries, revived the Hindu control over the southern Deccan and created a surge in cultural and economic activity. There was a blossoming of the arts, literature and music and trade extended to the Far East, Africa and Europe. The accounts of two Portuguese travellers, Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz, reveal a grandeur that matches the north during Mughal rule in places like Delhi and Agra....
On the road leading out of Hampi, there are two comparatively new temples — the Murugan and Palaniappan temples — whose gaudiness and ugliness were yet another testimony to how low we have fallen in the aesthetics of temple building. What does one make of the statues of two western girls doing the dandiya on the balustrade of the Palaniappan temple? Is this some cultural memory of the Europeans who came to trade in older times, or is it the influence of the young hippies who now gravitate to Hampi?
Culture is a form of memory. Perhaps our minds have neural paths that respond in remembrance of where we have been, personally and collectively. It seems that parts of us are asleep, too remote for our consciousness to grasp, but which awaken when we travel to places such as these or look at art. I felt definite connections with this land and its history. I have always been partial to South Indian food and Carnatic music.
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