I can confidently say I am the ludicrous caricature of my Alter-ego Prasad Pisharodi. We have a disinclination to put a degree of comparison to our friendship,as anything which is put under the scanner of comparison, is invariably demeaning it. As a wise man said " Imposing a nomenclature to a relationship restricts the rhythmic flow of love". Anyways so after a lot of intellectual pondering we settled for "Alter-ego" instead of "best friend" and "closest friend". So he commanded me,as it should be as Love commands and doesn't demand, to pack my effects and other paraphernalia for a trip to Ajanta. Ellora and Aurangabad. I gave monosyllabic answers to his curious questions, deceptively portraying an attitude of oblivion and indifference to the relatively naive. But I knew him, I knew he knows that I have as usual surrendered myself to him, and henceforth his wish would be an incorrigible command, as I said I am a ludicrous caricature of himself so I didn't want to fight with my better self. So our trips are never acutely planned which makes it hackneyedly predictable. We booked a room in a hotel for an incredulously ridiculous amount of ₹200 per person, too cheap that it made us suspicious about any malevolent, ignoble intentions of the hotelier. Anyways we always loved to sail on the tremulous boat of faith floating on the impetuous waters of doubt. Faith requires an awareness of being wrong, that is why the use of the phrase "A leap of Faith". So our skeptical minds did consider this possibility of us being in imminent danger of money being wheedled out of us through a cunning stratagem. But we took the leap of faith.
Next I checked online on our anomalously well-maintained railway website about the trains travelling to Jalgaon which was a mere 59 kilometres from Ajantha and our grandiose hotel. The best deal that I got was unreserved tickets to Jalgaon and we were at an ominous 94 and 95 on the waiting list. So I booked the tickets reluctantly as I am perennially averse to travelling unreserved, but I had already submitted myself to the wisdom of my Master Prasad Pisharodi, so there was no question of turning my back to the ticket counter. I booked the tickets, informed my alter-ego. I failed to add one more facetious or pertinent detail, the way you see it, I booked the tickets on 30th Jan and we were travelling on 31st Jan. So it was inevitable that I was going to be subjected to the insinuations, insults and the ridicule of my brethren who have taken the excruciating pain of planning their trip meticulously and book the tickets well on time, not literally on time, which we did but on time here means when the railways authorities were generous and condescending enough to provide tickets with a reservation. I reached the station an hour early, seriously an aberration to my infallibly undisciplined life. I stood standing there bemused waiting for the chart. And when the chart arrived, I saw that I have been assigned neither a seat nor a coach. I was an orphan in the train with no fatherly comfort of a coach and no motherly tender love of a seat. And my prophecy turned out to be true, the moment I sat on an empty seat, I was uprooted from it by a mere gesture of a hand by an elderly insolent man. His behaviour suggested as if he has bought the train and has already willed to bequeath it to his immediate heir who would only have a life-interest in it. I sat compacently at the next available empty seat but now I was just derisively directed to ease out of the seat. This was far more embarrassing and shameful than the earlier incident. Here the guy didn't even take the pain to insult me with invectives but merely shooed me away as if I had metamorphosed into a dumb ape. But during these barbaric acts inflicted upon me, I maintained my calm stoicism.
The only sanguine consequence was that my hubris was vehemently obliterated. I was wearing upper middle class clothes: denims and a cool shirt that should have evoked respect and awe and should have extenuated any petulance arising in a person whose seat has been occupied by me. But I was mercilessly disillusioned.
Anyways I finally got an empty seat. Then my friend Prasad boarded the train from Kalyan which sometimes is so unreasonably far from Sion as to exist in another planet altogether. Anyways he arrived with his blithe disposition, with no creases on his forehead marked by anxiety, but accepting the circumstances with an undeniable alacrity. He has this risible idiosyncrasy which impels everyone to undulatingly laugh and smile around him. He is this incredulous synthesis of intellect and innocence. Anyways praising him means I am invariably praising myself. So being pretentiously humble which actually ostentatiously boasts about my humility, invariably sowing a thorny seed of arrogance, I press forward. We were prattling about so called stuff in our lives avoiding any refined, intellectual talk, till our comfort was sentenced to death, and our hopes were mercilessly dashed. Another elderly man claimed his progenial right to his seat so now we were two behemoths confined to one seat, our abysmal circumstance assuaged by our jocular banter.
Then he implored us to vacant our seats that we have laid our siege upon as he was separated from his family owing to unconnected, disjointed seats due to the exigencies of booking the tickets well ahead of time to enjoy the insatiable luxury of reservation, thus casting aside any justifiable preferences for seats. So we were genuinely touched by his constant solicitation so we traded a seat, for which we had no claim whatsoever, for a seat that was guarded by the impregnable force of reservation. We were quite delighted at our ingenuity.
I understood the relativity of time when we sealed our friendships with an invisible totem. Time somehow takes an incorrigible flight, it always seems to be scarce when I am spending my time with him. The best part about conversing with him is that I am unconsciously talking to myself, answering to potent questions that I was hardly aware about. It sometimes appears to be a monologue. He appears to vicariously live my life through the instrument of my maudlin or stoical talk. That is what is required from a friend, a friend who lends a ear unconditionally without interrupting without being obtrusive and without being judgemental or prejudiced. Anyways so I was invariably emptying my mind off all the flotsam, rubble and debris that had been collected and subsequently rotting during my time of hibernation from him and unconsciously surrendering all my innocuous worries to the omnipotent divine.
So we were deliberately and compulsively awake till we reached our destination as we were quite confident about the fact that the sounds of the alarm on our phone would be just trifling, infinitesimal ants that would be trampled upon by our elephantine, gargantuan sounds of our yawns.
We got down at the station or we can say, as one of my acquaintances sealed his embarrassment for a perennial time, by calling his friend and boisterously claiming ,with an icing of floridity ,to suggest his intractable hold on the English language, that he has "landed on the station."
We took a rick and got to the ST bus station. We took a rickety, ramshackled bus to Fardapur. We informed the conductor to wake us up when we reach the destination. We dived into such a deep, inveterate ocean of dormant sleep that when we were awaken we woke up with a caustic jolt as the protagonist in horror movies jumps up with a start when he is haunted by an apparition or ghost in his or her sleep.
We were stranded in this oblivious place of Jalgaon. The passers by, the chai-wallah were trying to scare us by deliberately, consciously exaggerating the distance to be covered to reach our venerable hotel. It may also be just an instinctive reaction due to the inveterate habit of Indians to exaggerate. Sorry I don't want to be judgemental. But one of the many predilections common to me and Prasad is the enjoy of walking. So we started walking unperturbed with bags on our shoulders and imperishable smiles on our mouths. On the way, a well wisher in a well-polished car asked us whether we are going to the hotel and after getting an obscure, vague nod of our heads, voluntarily granted us a lift. Our bitter experiences of strangers in a strange town again gave rise to creases on our forehead and obnoxious distortions of our faces characterised by suspicion. But we were relieved when we finally arrived at Hotel New KP Park and the well-wisher didn't ask for a penny, instead beseeched us with a bigger proposition of booking his well-furbished car for the time of our stay. But we denied to return his gratitude with such an expensive gesture. Anyways this is the hotel where the owner being incredulously scrupulous, suggested us not to make a payment of ₹1000 online instead to make a payment of ₹200 per person per night which arouse gnawing suspicions in our mind which were still rather inchoate. We were escorted to our room by a gregarious, vivacious Sandeep on whom the depravity and hypocrisy of human behaviour realised with the ambivalent growing of age and the staleness of time has still leaved the child-like innocence untouched. He escorted us to our rooms, handed us the keys and gave us the assurance that he will be there whenever we needed him. Our room mollified our suspicions as the rooms were dilapidated and it was not worthy of a ₹1000 as we were suspecting that he will ask for an exorbitant amount of money after suggesting that ₹200 was just a deposit. But still the room was comfy. Our bodies were exhaling a pungent, acrid smell. So we quickly bathed and got into our new robes, packed whatever paraphernalia was not needed for the nonce.
The generosity of the hotel staff was overwhelming which was just exacerbating our suspicions even further. They dropped us at the foot of the hill where Ajantha caves were located. We bought the tickets. After an exhausting 20 minutes climb, we arrived at our desired destination. From the pinnacle of the hill, the layout of the caves resembled a prodigious, gigantic horseshoe. Anyways after our superficial, perfunctory frisking, we were freed to explore the unseen caves. We entered the first caves, it was enveloped in a benighted darkness with obscure innocuous little lights conspicuously failing to serve its purpose obtrusively imposed upon it. The minuscule lights were required to display the paintings, to guide the exploring traveller to showcase the intricacies, nitty-gritties of the painting, which actually intended to explain the Buddhist mythology in meticulous detail. But we were bewildered,nonplussed. We were in a conundrum, we wanted to have a very acute understanding of the depiction of the paintings but what we were able to observe was just a hotchpotch of myriad colours.We also wanted to comprehend the artistic, intrinsic value of the paintings. Anyways we implored, beseeched some fellow travellers to lend us a torch but they didn't heed to our constant solicitations. We hired a guide in utter frustration after exhausting whatever choices were available to us. What he did was an abhorrable, detestable thing to do. It was an outrageous, unforgivable mistake on our part. Years and eons of painstaking efforts and irrevocable commitment was demeaned by a superficial and hackneyed explanation that can be flagrantly observed by even an obtuse traveller. A guide should be ideally an aficionado, a virtuoso of art and should have considerable gnosis of the mythology depicted intricately by such kaleidoscopic paintings or by such flawless carvings. Anyways we learned a stinging, caustic lesson from this. We immediately went back and bought a guide approbated by the Archaeological Survey of India. And all this while I was hoping to find the pertinent torch to obliterate the darkness enveloping around us in the cave being oblivious to the obscure lights within it. But no one heeded to my constant solicitations. Anyways once we had the infallible weapon in the form of a guide book, we started our battle to understand how much our sensibility and our limited imagination allowed us.
It was unfathomable at the first how our ancestors who conceived this overcame the irrevocable architectural conundrums. But we were were fully aware about our barren architectural understanding, so we didn't try to comprehenend but capitulated to our inexpressible wonder with our mouths gaped open. The carvings provided us a numinous, ethereal experience with Buddha serene and stoical from every niche in the monastery. The carvings were intricately set in stone with indefatigable perseverance to carve the ornamentation with a preternatural obstinate detail. The most conspicuous and alluring feature of the caves were the cells inside the monastery, those cells were used by ascetics who wanted to extricate themselves from their intertwining threads of daily lives, who want to silence the rambunctious voices reverberating within their minds exacerbated by the boisterous noises outside, who wanted to relieve themselves of all the innumerable identities and absolve themselves of all countless responsibilities and repose within their selves. It was a cell for those hermits who wants to listen to the obscure yearnings of the soul. This was just a testimony to the fact that meditation forms the core of every religious and spiritual endeavour. We are all aware about the pertinence of meditation in Buddhism and Hinduism and other religions. I am just reading a book "The First Muslim" and there was a citation of a very notable fact that the word for spirit or soul and the breath is the same "ruh" in Arabic. This also provide further evidence to the fact that meditation should be made a very incorrigible part of our lives. The carvings at the entrance boasts of lascivious, licentious couples snuggling to each other, caressing and fondling with certain unspeakable private parts that can embarrass even a Casanova or a coquette. There were also carvings portraying the internecine violence of man. The objective of these carvings seem to showcase the ignoble, vile human depravity as a whole and the purpose of it was to arouse every conceivable poignant negative emotion in the chaotic minds of the hermits in order to purge them in their solitary confinements.
Next we visited the Ellora caves, we first entered a prodigious Hindu temple. We were again enveloped by a blinding fog of amazement and wonder. The entire Ramayana and Mahabharatha in exquisite detail was carved so meticulously in stone that for a moment you feel a part of those momentous epochs. The carvings talked about the myriad stories which provides an unprejudiced and broad-minded view of Hinduism characteristic of the age when India was an indomitable super-power, a common nemesis of empires around the world contrary to the dogmatic, patriarchal Hindutva which suppresses individualistic opinions, perceptions and beliefs that violate their own deep rooted beliefs watered by an impregnable obstinacy bordering on arrogance. This has caused an intellectual rape of various art forms by the riffraff obdurately influenced by the rabble-rousers and demagogues, who are an intractable force against the free-thinkers who are right now under the ominous danger of extinction. The proletariat, the rabble should visit these ancient temples where art has been displayed unyieldingly, where the amorous couples are shown in various sexual positions, where pantheon of deities are also not spared to portray the human life as a whole with its obvious lasciviousness, licentiousness, moral depravity. In some temples, there are flagrant carvings of homosexuals, gays, lesbians in various sexual positions sardonically mocking at the narrow-mindedness and chauvinism of the Hindutva brigade that fail to understand the old phrase that Hinduism is Sanathan Dharma that it is a way of life and not a religion to wage war for to prove its supremacy.
The developed countries are just emulating the erstwhile India where art was given an unalterable freedom and where every opinion or belief was taken into consideration with an unprejudiced mind. The temples provide us a glimpse of ecstasy, a bliss only comparable to the samadhi achieved after long perennial meditation. There were carvings all around depicting the various deities quite obnoxious and grotesque in nature like there was an horrifying carving of a Goddess which was naked all the way down, stripped off all the skin harbouring the skeleton of the body, it looked like an apparition of a skeletal ghost which will surely send shivers down your spine if accidentally visited in the ubiquitous stillness and silence of the dark, starless night. We visited a lot of Buddhist caves, Hindu caves and now we are yet to visit the Jain caves for which we have to inevitably plan a second trip.
I can go on but now I have to stop because now I am on the verge of giving way to my emotions violating the factual, objective tone of this write-up. I hope after reading this you will surely visit these caves and visit the Real India.
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