Chandan was no archaeologist but the sculptures lying strewn on the ground had his heart racing. A breathtaking montage of Mahisasura mardini etched with fluidity and grace on black granite was just another piece of some startling sculptural work that he had seen north of the Vindhyas. The crumbling temple where villagers still worshipped stood with its body parts strewn around it, carefully numbered by the Archaeological Survey of India, then forgotten. Each piece was a work of art, some reminiscent of the erotic couplings of Khajuraho, though the temple predated the erotic art of Khajuraho by 200 years.
Most faces had been dutifully defaced by passing Islamic conquerors and passing vandals, but even the disfiguration could not hide the sheer individual beauty of the sculptures. Chandan had wandered into this village after having chanced on a rather poorly illustrated Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation brochure titled “Lesser known destinations of Rajasthan”. Desperately seeking to delay his return to Delhi and back into the company of the obnoxious SinhaRoy, Nandy had decided to go back after taking the longer route through Bharatpur on the Jaipur-Agra highway before turning back to Delhi on the Agra-Delhi highway. This was not more than a couple of hours more to the journey but a couple of hours that he could do with away from the office.
“Beautiful, no?”
Chandan turned to see a tall Rajasthani with a dusty blazing red turban perched on a weather-beaten forehead. Dhoti wrapped loose and high over his knees, the man squatted next to Chandan, his weight resting on the roughly hewn stick.
“That one is beautiful, one of the best. But, saheb, the better ones have been taken away to different museums around the world. Some by the sarkari people some by the dalals.” He wiped his brow on the back of his sleeve. “Many come, saheb. Some to see, some try and steal, some to admire… what brings you here to Abhaneri, saheb?”
“Nothing, I was just passing by… why is this place called Abhaneri? Why on god’s earth should someone build a fabulous temple in the middle of nowhere?”
The Rajasthani dutifully posed next to a pillar of intricate carvings, years of accosting madly clicking tourists for a couple of rupees of baksheesh giving him a telepathic appreciation of what they wanted.
“Saheb, I don’t know who built this and why. Some say it was the great Raja Chand who ruled over this place three thousand years ago… some say it was Raja Bhoja who ruled over Gurjar. But Abhaneri was actually Abha Nagri, where Harshat Mata spreads joy and brightness or abha all around. Harshat Mata, saheb, is Mata Durga. Even now, Saheb, we have festivals and people come from far off places… but there was a time when my ancestors used to dine with the kings.”
To Chandan some of it sounded practiced ASI spiel, some earthy nostalgia. Changing lenses, he continued shooting, “But is there any haveli, any palace, any fort around here?”
“No saheb, but the Chand baoli does have staying quarters.”
“Chand baoli?”
The villager gestured at the wall that ran around an enclosure opposite the temple. “There saheb. One of the world’s most beautiful baolis… they say if you drop a coin on the top most step, it goes all the way down to the water…”
Chandan began to pack in his photographic gear. “A baoli? What is a baoli?”
“Saheb, baoli is a well… but not like one where you drop a bucket… it has steps that go down. The women used to go down the steps and collect water, have a bath, wash their clothes, dry them on the steps… now they have closed the baoli”
Chandan and the Rajasthani lad reached the what looked like the entrance to an ancient stone house. Lying around the entrance were a few charpoys and slumbering men in khaki. The notice outside read take shoes off and no photography. Chandan stepped out of the threshold and stood still, his gaze on a descending quadrangle of steps, perfectly geometrical in clusters of four steps at each descending level. The baoli was like an inverted pyramid made of sandstone, each step a marvel of precision, each cluster of four steps a pyramid.
“This is smashing! Why doesn’t the world not know about it? I have never seen anything this breathtaking. Arre bhai, what is your name?”
“Nathuram, saheb”
“Why has this place not become a paradise for tourists? Why is it that all those truckloads of tourists going from Agra to Jaipur not coming here…?”
Nathuram watched Chandan perplexed.
“And why would they come here, saheb? To see the ruins?”
“No! To see this” Chandan waved his arms around in a frantic attempt to share with Nathuram the sheer ecstasy he felt, the ecstasy he was sure that travellers like him would feel when they stumbled on this splendid work of human art. “This is one of the world’s most fascinating architectural things… you know, you have never been out of this village, but the Taj Mahal is nothing compared to this!” Chandan babbled in an attempt to share with this villager his ‘find’, one , he was sure that Nathuram could not appreciate because he took the beauty of the temple and the baoli for granted.
Nathuram spat on the ground, “Saheb, I have done duty in Jaipur, I have seen Alwar. I have seen Amer. I have seen Agra. This is okay. Quite nice but not chamatkar, saheb. Besides, who will want to come here? There are no hotels, no shops, not even a glass of water to drink.”
Chandan shook his head in exasperation, “Nathuji, Taj Mahal, Jaigarh, Amer are ‘known’. They are familiar. This is not known. This is exotic. This is wonderful. This is beauty lost. This is like the temples of the Incas, a lost, world.”
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