Travelogues  
Empires and Dust
Travels in Modern India – II                                              ( Page 3 )
by Ashish Nangia

The Sun Temple at Jhalawar, amazingly, is a living temple with an active congregation that today consists mostly of women, chanting away inside as we look around and take pictures.  The sculpture on the walls, ceiling and columns, while profuse, is just above ordinary in its workmanship.  On the other hand, maybe I’ve been spoilt by Konark and Bhuvaneswar.  The locals seem certainly proud, and one man offers to show me what he calls a ‘box’.  It turns out to be an erotic carving on one side.  I tell him that there are much better at Konark, in quality and quantity, and suggest he go look for himself.  There is little other direct local contact.  Megha wanders around as I debate whether to follow her, or to swing around the other side and meet her coming head on.  These are delicate issues that assume incredible importance in the course of a day.  I decide to look at the temple instead and postpone the decision. 

Jhalawar temple is strange in its form.  A shikhara and jagmohan keep it within the acceptable limits and vocabulary of the archetypical north Indian Hindu temple, but it’s a mish-mash of sorts, incorporating elements that have no business being here with others.  Here there is a Gujarati torana, that goes with the intricacy of the ceiling but not with the shikhara.  A first floor with a terrace (!) challenges all notions of what a temple is, and is used for.  I later learn that this mix-and-match is characteristic of many temples that we will later see.  And in retrospect, this is not so unreasonable.  When Rajput art and palaces borrow heavily from Mughal examples and fuse styles together, why should one expect religious architecture to be any different?  Here, in this little town, this little lesson in aesthetic fusion is brought home. 

The rest of Jhalawar, including the fortress on a hillock, is singularly uninspiring.  What is of more interest are a group of temples near the town. 

The main shrine is a fusion of elements, with pillars, ceiling work, and a strange, misshapen crumbling dome clearly additions and alterations at different times.  There are two small shrines behind this temple, elegant works of art with exquisite carving climbing sinuously up their facades, motifs that do not seem to belong, an almost South-East Asian iconography of form and icon that looks out of place in Jhalawar. 

The ride back is in silence, with even the driver tired, it seems, his early ardour cooled down.  It is evening by the time we reach Kota. 

Dinner at Akshay’s place is a mix of excellently spiced food and even spicier conversation.  Kota’s elder sister-in-law is an attractive woman whose sharp conversation makes her a potentially really interesting person.  Kids run around all over the floor mingling with a large locust that Akshay crushes mercilessly.  We sleep on the floor on two mattresses lined up together, a difficult sleep in the heat, mosquitoes and anticipation of waking early in the morning. 

September 17, 2006

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See Also : Empires and Dust: Travels in Modern India - I 

 
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