Leaving a legacy…
“ It is not about praying to the deity, but walking on the same ground that the greats adorned with their footsteps and paying obeisance to mother Earth who carried those legends.”
Someone I know said the above on my recent Kerala temple tour. I wouldn’t call it a pilgrimage because there is nothing remotely religious about me. However, for any kind of tour, I am always ready. My neighbor had a point though. If you ever go to the Southern part of India and visit some of the temples there, you will see the significance behind that statement. Even if not religious, the temples are architectural marvels, their brilliance unmatched today.
The temples constructed with stone and hand sculpted over decades and sometimes centuries date as far ago as the 9th century AD, the credit attributed to the Cheras, Cholas and the Pandyas. When the reign changed hands, the temple construction continued with the same fervor. At times, the neighboring kings joined in the endeavor since it was a matter of pride and honor to house the deity in their neighborhood.
Though each magnificent in it’s own way, the one that stood out to me was Suchindram, a temple in Nagercovil, Tamil Nadu. The sculptures stood tall and imposing, carved out of a single stone, minutely detailed. It is so extremely detailed that one can see the taut tendons of the narthakis/ dancers and feel the sharpness of their finger nails. The pillars in a certain part of the temple are resonant to the extent that one can evoke the seven musical notes by simply thumping on them. Mind you, those are solid structures, not hollow from within.
It made me marvel at what we were capable of once upon a time and how we lost our glory over the ages. It is arrogant and insane to believe that we are evolving forwards as a species. Our ancestors were brilliant and we barely in all our arrogance even scratch the surface.
My return journey was plagued with the news of the collapse of Shivaji Maharaja’s statue. It is evidence of how we are regressing in our capabilities. Whether that be the materials used or the expertise required to pull off a project of this scale and magnitude. I won’t even go into the corruption part. With our own transport minister complaining about questionable materials being used by contractors, the lack of ethical standards is clear as daylight.
We have Indian companies that build roads abroad, but somehow the ones that we make in our own country are subpar. Every other day, a newly constructed road is dug up to accommodate a new cable line or maybe for the heck of it. It amazes me how creatively and morally bankrupt we have to be to have such shoddy engineering. We have people painting pavements to show the usage of allocated funds. It irritates and saddens me as a citizen.
We have new building constructions coming up to house a ever swelling population with again, questionable standards. Why don’t we make it mandatory for each construction company who takes up a project to beautify and make perfect a one km radius around their project by teaming up with the government? And our respective governments can aid the process by not digging up existing infrastructure. (Not a cue to increase housing costs and taxes which are through the roof any which ways.)
The pressing question is, “What are we leaving behind for our future generations as a country?” What pieces of engineering and architectural marvel are we creating? The ones that we try to create, do not even withstand a single rainfall. Will there be anything legendary worth mentioning post independence?
You don’t begin by working for credit. You do great work and leave behind a legacy and the credit will come from generations that follow. That is how honorable and great personalities are remembered. Our statesmen are quick to have their names on billboards and take credit for the smallest of their creations. By the way, even those billboards are falling and killing people. When governments change hands, none of them continue with the same principled vision as our yesteryear kings did.
Tomorrow when our great grandkids walk the path that we did, will they pay obeisance to the ground that we trod on or will we be simply forgotten along the annals of time?
