Temples

Nandi at Brihadeeshwara. If you look closely, you'll see that he's licking his nostril.


I really enjoy temples. I like the architecture and sculptures, of course, but I especially enjoy the sense of living history. The Brihadeeshwara temple at Thanjavur, for example, has been in continuous use for a thousand years, and I'm pretty sure that what happens at the temple today is exactly what has happened there every day for all of that time. I think that when you step up to the inner sanctum you step way, way back. And it's great to be barefoot. The temples are a lot more than religious, however; they're a big social scene. Families go there for outings. People go sightseeing from temple to temple. We encountered serious pilgrims and busloads of laboring-class people from really far away. I could understand one group at Mammalapuram so clearly that I struck up a conversation--they were from Madhya Pradesh! They were wearing traditional village clothes, and the women had those fat silver anklets like croissants. They had a bus.

Sculpture on the gopurum. It's designed so that the shadow of the temple never touches the ground.


Downspout.


I think the girl is irritated because these boys have stolen her foreigner. This was New Years Day, and a lot of carefully cleaned children, not cosmopolitan children at all, were running around. This girl and her friend came to stare at me close up for a while. Then this girl seized the day, extended her hand, and said, "Happy new year." So I shook it, and said it back. So then there were children offering their hands everywhere I went on the temple grounds. As we were leaving, watching our driver try to extricate himself from the parking lot, a little girl was staring at me from the window of a van. So I said, "Happy New Year", and she sort of gasped, controlled herself, and said, "Thank you."