Rocks, rocks, rocks
India rocks (literally): rock carvings and rock temples all around Mamallapuram / Good-bye south
I chose the ballet. Back then in Pondicherry, I mean. Yes, Europe won, I know what it signalizes…
I chose ballet for 2 reasons:
One, I wasn’t looking for entertainment, I was looking for food for my soul, and I felt that ballet would be more nutritious food than Indian theater. As I wrote few posts ago, when it comes to religions I consider Hinduism “superior” to Christianity, but when it comes to culture, or art, to be more precise, I’m sorry India, but your permanent and boring obsession with Ramayana, really doesn’t turn me on. Of course that the theater was some part from Ramayana, every Indian theater is some part from Ramayana. It seems that they just cannot move over it.
Two, I will surely still have chance to see some Indian theater, but there will probably be zero chance to see ballet again.
By the way, I thought that the urban ballet (modern ballet, sort of hip-hop influenced classical ballet) would be held in some small room and there will be 15 people there. Who would care about modern ballet here, right? Well, it was held in a venue with 600 seats, occupied to the last one. About 2/3 of spectators were Indian and rest was local French community and tourists. The dance company was from Bordeaux. I have never been to ballet before (or any other classical or modern dance performance) but this one was great. Unfortunately, the Indians have as much respect for performing arts as the European have for gods, so despite the fact that they were explicitly asked not to do it, all the time, someone was moving in and out of the hall, changing the seats, half of the people didn’t turn off their mobiles so they kept on ringing. They really got on my nerves, and at the end I quit my seat and sat in the alley in the front.
Well, but Mamallapuram.
What do we have here… Beautiful rock carvings and temples carved into rocks - the only real historical sight I have seen here in south India – and windy beach, unsuitable for swimming but OK for some fun in waves, heaps of seafood and souvenir shops. Nothing super exciting happened here, except that, after those days of contemplation and reading the books I attained enlightenment, yes, one enlightenment a day these days :-) on human (un)happiness and joy. But this is a long story/thought, I wrote down more than 6 pages (on paper by pen), so I have to refine it and rewrite it to electronic version and will post it later. In the meantime, contemplate on your own :-)
Oh, I got one more thing to mention. One afternoon I went to the park with the temples, fixed my eyes on Shiva Lingam in one of them and tried open-eyes-meditation and chanting of Shiva mantras. After 20 minutes I reached visual hallucinations :-) Nothing spiritual, frankly speaking I think it was just simply caused by the fact that we are not used to staring at one single point for 20 minutes without any break, and my sight just got overwhelmed with it, so things started to disappear, mingle with each other, change proportions and so on, but it was amazing!
These were my last days in south India, let’s go back to the dirtier and more crowded north, but above all, let’s go to mountains!
