Wrath of a woman wronged
KAUSALYA SANTHANAM
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Amidst acres and acres of undulating sand stands this cluster of thousand-year-old temples.
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Historical place: Sunrise catches the early morning bathers on the banks of the Cauvery.
Sand dunes as far as the eye can see. “Sand” is what defines Talakad, acres and acres of golden grains amidst which rest shrines that go back to more than a thousand years. I, like countless before me, feel overawed standing amidst the u
ndulating heaps.
To think of these structures remaining here for so many centuries while innumerable pilgrims come and go, generations appear and vanish, and dynasties rise and fall, is to divest one of ego. It is to underline the permanence of stone and ancient skills and the transient nature of life. I plough my way behind the guide who pleads that I engage him as soon as the vehicle turns into the road that leads to the dunes and the cluster of temples that defines this ancient capital of the Western Gangas.
An Island
Talakad has seen the devout expressions in stone of the Gangas, the Cholas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagar kings and the Wodeyars of Mysore. The scenic place gets its name from the legend of the hunters Tala and Kada whose axe inadvertently fell on the lingam hidden under a tree. Talakad is an island and the five lingams in and around represent the five faces of Siva, hence Panchalingeswara. The Panchalinga darshan festival takes place every few years. Talakad is 45 km from Mysore and 130 km from Bangalore.
The guide starts narrating the story of Alamelamma, the wife of Srirangaraya who was the viceroy of the Vijayanagar kings at Srirangapatna in the 17th century. It is a tale that has gripped the popular imagination and a story so worth telling that I do not want to mar his joy by pointing out I have heard it twice before — once at Mysore and again at Srirangapatna. Alamelamma would adorn Goddess Ranganayaki with the jewels in her possession. After her husband’s death, the Wodeyar, who took over the province from the Vijayanagar king, wanted her to hand over the jewels to him. She refused and fled to the village of Malingi near Talakad.
When the king’s men pursued her on horseback, she pronounced the curse that has resonances till today for the scions of the Mysore royalty, and then threw herself into the Cauvery: “May Talakad be buried in sand, may Malingi turn into a whirlpool and may the rulers of Mysore never have offspring.”
The guide gets carried away while reciting the beautiful, rhyming Kannada verse and I find we have reached the shrine of Goddess Chowdeswari. We then climb the dunes to make our way past cashew trees laden with flame like fruit. A few minutes later we come to the shrine of Sri Pathaleswara where a couple of local women are hoping devotees will opt for their puja offerings.
The Hoysala temple of Kirti Narayana.
Steps lead down to the shrine which shows the original level at which the temples were built. Periodic waves of sand cover the temples, to be excavated again and again. Now steep embankments have been built both here and at the Sri Maraleswara shrine. “Tsunami perhaps, madam, could have caused the sand onslaught,” the guide tells me in chaste Kannada, and I nod in seeming concurrence. A more likely cause is the river having changed direction! We climb on and soon find ourselves overlooking a stretch where huge boulders and chiselled granite lie on the site while the foundation is revealed in a Chinese Checkers pattern. This is where the Hoysala temple of Kirti Narayana stood. The ASI is reassembling it, I’m told. Evening worship is on for the main deity, a beautifully carved idol of Lord Vishnu, 10 ft tall and installed for the present in the recently reassembled Mahadwara. “It was very difficult to put the pieces together,” says the ASI supervisor at the site. He goes into raptures about the architectural skills of the Hoysala craftsmen who without access to cement, precisely fitted the huge stone slabs of the wonderful structure. “ It will take at least five to six years for the work to be completed,” he adds. Will the stones be safe from the vagaries of the weather and vagabonds over such a long period of time, one wonders.
We then visit the neighbouring Vaidyeswara temple, another beautiful monument of perhaps the Hoysala or the Vijayanagar period . The temple to the Lord who healed Himself is rich in sculptural detail and the Dwarpalakas are said to be among the largest in Karnataka. A huge Nandi that sits atop a dome is a model of the original and in vanilla distemper looks quite out of place.
A few minutes later we are standing on the banks of the Cauvery, while picnickers frolic in the waters. As I drive away, I think of the powerful Gangas named after the life giving river that is sister to the Cauvery. And of Alamelamma who like Kannagi came from a prosperous town watered by the Cauvery, and is a symbol of the power of a woman wronged.
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