By Vedashree B N
Journeys have legs too. They put their fresh first step in our minds. We never really wait for buses and trains to travel. The maps are already rolled down in the curving lanes of our brains. Thinking of the stops we will make, dreaming of the flavours we will taste, sketching the people’s faces we might see. Journeys travel too, with both feet deep into minds, reaching all the way to our hearts.
My heart travelled once, long ago, and my mind still sits back and plays the dreamy vintage cassettes of that trip. The destination was set to Puri, an ancient city in Odissa of India, full of swirling impressions of the one-of-a-kind deity of the city, Jagannatha. Puri, the divine place, seems like a piece of fabric woven with everything stringing to Jagannatha, the beloved lord. The whole city echoes with Jagannatha’s magical stories. The voices of nature, sheltering in him, sing his songs with the sweetest tune. All the streets glow with an antique aura, leading to his home, the Puri Jagannatha Temple.
It sits in my memory with a firm chair also because of another reason. It was my first flight ever! The tickets were booked, the bags fully packed, off we left in the early scenes of a chill dawn. I was not alone. We were a group of people dedicated to see him in person. To see him, to see him, to see him. That mantra wandered on our tongues for years and years, and finally opened the door in our eyes, found home. We were going to see him! Jagannatha!
To take you with me, let me let you see him too. But first, board the flight! Now!
The seatbelts was an expected hassle, I was ready there sitting tight. My brain thought I was about to start an amusement park ride and decided to panic me a bit. I had the same exact chemical reactions happening inside me, when I first sat tight, holding onto dear life on the inside, but comically on a weak metal bar on the outside, when I first rode a rollercoaster. The flight started. I took out my tiny, pretentious book, wrote down these words in my language-
“Clouds. Clouds in monotony,”
And, presumably, I fell asleep for the rest of the journey, for it was too pleasant to be a ride. Is it a ride when there are no humps? Is it a flight if it doesn’t hum a monochromic sound all the way long? Is it supposed to be this way? As I said, I slept. The questions pulled up blankets too.
Hours later, we landed on the sun. No, just kidding, but it did feel like that. It was summer and it was Odissa. It could not get hotter than that. We, the group, headed towards our residence, met our rooms, shook its door-hand’le’s and left to see him.
Every city has a flavour. Every city is a flavour. Like dressing styles and ways of doing its hair. Cities are women for sure, I don’t know about god. A city speaks in her own accent, her own way of ornamenting you with studded memories. She talks to you through her people, she laughs at you standing behind the sign boards you cannot read, she takes you through herself, holding your hands, so you don’t get lost in her charcoal black eyes. She wants you to see her shades of colour. She travels with you all the time you reside in her, and years later when you think of her, you have your own story of romance with her, like some pretty black-eyed woman you met on the trip, a fantasy to remember by.
Puri had her ways of enticing us with her artistic shawls, smelling so sweet like the stalls near the temple. Jagannatha loves food. Every street has countless stalls selling sweets of so many colours and shapes dripping nothing but sweetness and wrapped in papers dipped in pure devotion. The walls of the city had priceless paintings with a tinge of mythology, full of bright blue and mustard yellow colours. There were so many tiny temples waving at you when you pass-by, it seemed adorable. We finally reached the main huge temple, whco was swarmed by people from all across the globe. I had read in books how this temple had unimaginable number of ways and paths, heading to the Garbhagudi, the centre core of any temple where the deity’s idol lies, but also where the devotees see. I was ready to see.
We climbed stone-made rectangular steps, crossed lengthy railings, swam through the sea of people, somehow reaching the place where he stood. I will never forget the first time I saw him. He was black in form, made of wood, so gigantic that your eye doors open as wide as they can. My doors opened too. They started filling up with drops of water, joining to make streams flowing out. The doors were overflowing, the origin being the mountains of my heart, covered in thick ice caps of life, now melting ruthlessly, just by seeing him. Love, sometimes is the warmth in your tears.
Just like any other big group, ours too had disintegrated into many little grouplets wandering around. I had a companion too. Me and her were truly travelling together, throughout the journey in the destination. We both were fascinated by the astounding architectural wonders beaming out of every inch of the temple. Our fingers touched the damp texture of the sharp curves and smooth corners of the structures adorning the temple. We stood at places for long minutes with jaws on floors over how beautiful and majestic the creation looked. We both agreed how Jagannatha is so re-visitable. We were far from the Garbhagudi, the centre where he stood, let us imagine, waiting for us. We just wanted to see him again. We agreed to leave the tiny group for a while, and started running amidst people to fill our eyes with him, again. We entered a big door which seemed like an entrance, peeped in with curious eyes and slowly walked in, like walking on a flower. Very softly, very swiftly. We quickly entered the line, stooped down, jumped up, put our necks out, and eyes as far as we could reach and alas! Our eyes met again.
Completely satisfied with the second time of sight, inspite of the illegal entry, which were shoo-ed away from, filled our bodies with some quanta of jiggling energy. We floated around, watching the nooks of the structures bending their own ways in the temple’s structure. Her heart was in mine, and mine in hers. Both of ours in him.
Jagannatha has his name famously celebrated in an epic poem written by a brilliant poet, Jayadeva, who lived in 12th century. The bunch of poems with eight lines each, often, is named as Geetagovindam, which translates to songs of Jagannatha, the graceful lord. Jagannatha is just another name for Lord krishna. Just like a mother having a unique loving name for her little son, Puri calls Krishna as Jagannatha. The stories of him are laced with divine romance and artsy details which can make a painter devote an entire life to create these episodes alone on their canvas. It is a joy to listen to his stories, to view how he lived, how he loved, how he sang and how he moved. As a Sanskrit praise says- “Everything he does is sweetness in itself. He is the chief of sweetness.”, Jayadeva beautifully describes Krishna’s unbelievably intoxicating romantic episodes in his magnum opus, Geetagovindam. Luckily our group had well learned dancers who were excellent in expressing these intricate stories with simply beautiful dance and gestures, accompanied by the honey-dripping songs of the poet Jayadeva.
We all sat in a corner, at the external surroundings of the Garbhagudi, the centre. Our dancers stood in their positions, with bare feet on the ground springing with love and life. They started performing and it gained the attention of the visitors. Hundreds of people surrounded us, to watch them flow into dance, while the drifting sound waves of the songs of his stories filled their hands with gestures and feet with ease. The dancers’ haunting portrayal of Krishna saying to his beloved- “Please keep your feet on my head, my dearest love. Only then will this steaming passion inside me will condense and flow away from me. Free me!” snatched away our hearts to far away places, to ancient times when Krishna lived and poured the nectar of love to his loving souls. Oh how the dancer became Krishna herself! How another came in and held Krishna’s tender hands and looked him in the eyes, and transformed right away into his beloved. Oh how we all travelled through every lane of his historical romance, with our hearts in his cherry pink hands!
The dancers evaporated into music and the rhythm paused its breath. It was time for the curtains of our journey to roll down. But I tightly hold them up, with all my might, today too. I might have come back from the place with a body and a heart, but when you fall in love, doesn’t your soul leave chunks of itself all over the place, just so you can come back tracing them to the beloved? I still go. I still walk beside its waters. I still wander the streets there, with lamps of memories in my hands. I sometimes live, there. Journeys have legs too, to take you back, there. I’m here. Are you coming?
By Vedashree B N
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