Jaipur, Day 16

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Its name is Galta, similar to that of the sage Galina who performed his penance at the site, but everyone knows it as the Monkey Temple. Just a faded relic, really. A nod to an era long gone. It’s a place of pilgrimage, of course, but it’s also lost place, a reminder of how, despite the immense number of people crowding the subcontinent, nature is always waiting, crouching in the shadow, ready to take India back.

Of course, the dry, rugged gorge Galta balances on was once wild. It belonged to the desert first and then to the monkeys first, so it’s only fair for those two forces to reclaim it. And all day the monkeys hang out, chattering and gallivanting like a colony of heathen sadhus, naked and wholly devoted to renouncing the world.

Only the monkeys don’t really renounce the world. They were never part of it in the first place—never trod the streets of Jaipur in smart suits and toe-cramping shoes, never smoked bidis, chewed paan, spit red betel against white-washed walls. But they do wait for the world to come to them—smell it coming, look for the glint of walkmans, cameras, flashy track shoes. The monkeys anticipate the world, and hope it comes baring snacks.

There are human inhibitors, too. Because nowhere in India is ever really abandoned, especially holy places. Let go, yes, But let alone—never. A crouched man in orange dhoti sweeps the steps with a broom of bound branches. He sweeps, and waves of the pious and the less-than-devout visitors track more dust to the sun temple.

Surya Namaska Bhagavate. The Sun God, once an object of worship, the one for whom the Galta temple was constructed, has been upstaged by a horde of unruly primates. They crowd the elegant minarets, swing from the delicate rails, and bare their teeth at passers-by.

But the Sun God doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be in residence any more. The plaster on the side of the temple buildings is cracked, darkly stained by weather. The buildings are worn by so many hands, so many feet passing, and the once brightly-colored murals of Radha and Krishna have faded almost beyond recognition.

Still, no one tries to fix the place up. The man in his orange dhoti goes on sweeping, the pilgrims go on circumambulating, dragging their bare feet along the crumbling surfaces, and the tourists go one pointing and shooting their cameras, adding insult to the injured paintings with sharp flashes. Everyone follows the lead of the monkeys, blindly loving Galta into oblivion.

It’s hard to be in such a place. To be in the midst of ruins, witnessing civilization crumble but at the same time recognizing the searing faith that created the string of temples fused to the sides of the gorge. There’s just hard rock, jagged edges, soaring cliffs, painfully blue sky. Just the landscape, and then—as if stark contrast—the sun-bleached yellows and oranges of graceful architecture, swirling towers, pinnacles mimicking the gorge peaks, and delicate lattice screens.

On one painting, a Maharaja—still strikingly rendered in red and gold—rides an elephant formed of the bodies of his harem. A reminder of the rich past, the not so distant history. And in contrast to the rugged land all around, the square that the temple compound overlooks is a smooth square of orderly tiles.

The strident steeple of the Sun Temple lunges skyward; ornately carved by its creator, Diwan Kriparam, and phallic enough to make Shiva proud. It can be seen anywhere in Jaipur—a silent call to all who still might pray to Surya Namaskar Bhagavate, wherever he resides.

Above the chaos of the temple complex, beyond the bold primates grasping at unwitting tourists, a flight of steps leads to the holy tanks. It used to be that the highest of the ceremonial baths was for male pilgrims, the next down was for the women, and the third was constructed for the monkeys, and dedicated to Hanuman, god of the Apes and faithful protector of Prince Rama.

But all of that history is lost, of course. Lost to every photograph, every dazed eye arriving, beholding, blinking at the spectacle.


image from i.pbase.com

After they left the monkey temple, Dev drove the usual tourist trail. They went to Tiger Fort and Dev waited at the car park while Ami strolled up the steep road to the entrance. There were other drivers sitting with their cars, listening to the radio, smoking cheroot, chewing paan. Dev didn’t know any of them. He wandered toward the far edge of the dirt lot and urinated into the bushes.

He wouldn’t tell Ami, but he did wish he could accompany her on her sight seeing. He imagined walking beside her, his arm securely around her waist, holding her back pack for her while she snapped photographs of the view from the fort.

“It’ll be a terrible picture,” she’d tell him. “There’s no way to do justice to such a shot. Such a panoramic view. But at least it’ll be something to remind me.”

He would kiss her then, and not care who noticed. That’s how he envisioned it.

The truth was that he’d never been to the Tiger Fort. He’d never been past the car park, except on one occasion when he’d been driving a retired couple and the woman had become upset at the entry gate when she was changed a 30 rupee fee for carrying a camera that she insisted she wasn’t planning to use. That one time, Dev had made the steep climb to try to sooth things over with the guards, explaining that the woman meant no harm, beseeching them to admit her and wave the camera fee. In the end it had worked out, and the couple went on into the fort. Dev, of course, was left to make his way back to the car where he waited two hours for their return.

Ami was different from most of the tourists he’d driven. Even apart from the fact that she seemed romantically interested in him, she was thoughtful. When he told her to meet him back at the Ambassador in thirty minutes, she was there. She kept track of the time. Maybe, he told himself, it was just because she was traveling alone—had no one to distract her, no one to suggest that the driver would wait, isn’t that what we’re paying him for?

Still, he would’ve liked, just once, to walk through the gate, peer down over the eastern edge of Rajasthan, have tea in the little restaurant, maybe purchase a post card to commemorate the occasion. Just once.


image of Nahargarh Fort (Tiger Fort) from www.vaisnava.cz

Sometimes the spiritual world had a way of rising up through the clatter and commotion of the day, making its presence known even as elephants trundled past, teen-aged boys on scooters hurled along dusty roads, and vendors squawked the virtues of their wares.

Sometimes it came in the form of the renunciates, traveling invisible, naked, otherworldly, hiding in broad day light until the moment came to reveal themselves. And then there they were, the gaunt clusters of them, only their genitals covered in dingy rags or girthed with chastity belts of wood and metal chain. They wore their hair matted, unkempt, the locks sometimes reaching past the waist, their beards dusty, their trident staffs clutched in hand.

They came, and said nothing, because their silent presences said everything.

But the spiritual voice of India didn’t always come in the clothes of a beggar or a saint, not always a baba, not always male. Contrary to the outward appearance, the feminine spirit still inhabited the land, still laid in waiting under iridescent rice paddies and inner-lit mustard fields. Still whispered her many names into the waiting ears:

Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Sita, Radha, Rukamini, Jagadambe.
She didn’t always reside in the temples and shrines built in her name, didn’t carry a begging bowl or smear herself in ashes from the funeral pyres. In fact, she preferred the flower vendors near the holy places, the clean water, the ever-shrinking jungles, the peaceful gardens where peacocks wandered lazily across manicured lawns.

She liked the sitar, often lingered near musicians, recognized herself in a lilting voice or a graceful gesture. She slept in rooms with brocade and velvet and silk, and she slept on rooftops under canopies of stars.
Sometimes she returned to the crumbling, nameless temple outside the Jaipur city limits. The locals, some of them, recalled who it was built for, but even as their memories failed, hers remained sharp. She came back, now and then, treading the damp path in bare feet, her toe rings glittering in smattered sunlight.

There was only an old woman tending the place, sweeping the steps with a fistful of dried weeds. The woman swept, hunched almost double, her ears keen for what her eyes, blinded by cataracts, couldn’t see.

Inside, through the elaborately carved door, the sanctuary had fallen into disrepair, a corner of the roof completely gone and a gangly tree growing up from the rain-ruined floor. But that didn’t matter. She would just as soon the sunlight find its way into her temple. She preferred trees to icons, flowers to incense, rain to the sour milk in which her statues were ritually bathed.

One priest was inside, kneeling beside the cracked marble alter, chanting her name over and over. She wanted to go to him, tell him she heard him, heard his prayers, tell him she’d come. But it would’ve been a lie. She hadn’t come because she was summoned, she came because she was curious, because she was following where her feet led, her whims.

So, instead, she knelt in the shadows for awhile, listened to the music of the man’s voice, closed her eyes and day-dreamed of peacocks, of multi-colored birds, or sweet mangos so ripe the juice would run down her arms while she ate of the fruit.


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