A Temple at Pandarpur

Dated: 28th Jun 1997

Sorry, ladies n gennelmen. It is not what you expected. This article is not about the temple in Pandharpur that you crave to visit. This is not about the temple in which the famed Panduranga statutte is situated. Not because of the fact that I didn’t like the sacred Panduranga temple, that I am not writing about it – I did like it – but more so, the reason is that this sacred temple is like how all the sacred temples in this world ought to be. Nothing special about it, with the exception, of course, of its extra-sanctity.

What I am going to write about, instead, is another temple, situated about one kilometer from the Panduranga temple. So ‘What, then, is so special about this temple?’ you might as. You’ll know soon enough.

The name of my chosen temple is ‘Kykadi temple’. A temple – I still am not sure whether ‘temple’ is the right word for it – which you will never forget it in your life if you ever visit it. Candidly speaking, I liked this temple more the sacred Panduranga temple for which the city is proud of and famous for and for which people from all over the country crave to visit.

At an outer glance, just as one enters, one can only perceive that the temple consists of three blocks, each separated by a distance. But then, how true it is when Hercule Poirot says, “Nothing is more misleading than mere observation!” One block is on the left of the entrance gate, say west, one more directly in front of the gate, say north, and the last one on the right, say east. We could not look for an entrance in the north block, so we thought of entering in either the east or the west block. [The directions are with respect to the gate of the temple, which accordingly is south]

Since the majority of the population in the temple seemed to be entering the west block and an equal majority exiting the east block – that is no one was found entering the east block – fuelled by the fact that a person standing idly there told us to enter in the west block first, we were forced to do so. So west block it was, then.

The entrance, abruptly, just as we – my family and me – entered, turned to left. It was then that we came to know that there is no particular God in the temple. Almost all the gods, all prominent individuals and saints were carved on the wall to our right. It was a tunnel that we were traversing – a tunnel full of ‘The Greats!’ The tunnel – sufficiently bright, was like a grid (‘Roundabout’ Puzzle, to be precise), where you go round and round and finally come to the centre of the west-block, which was occupied life-like images of certain saints. Just when we thought that the west block was over, the frail fingers of truth touched us.

There was no exit from the west block. A flight of stairs, which you must compulsorily climb, leads to the top of the west block and there you know what ‘Kykadi temple’ is all about. The truth was, once you enter the temple in the west-block – because the entrance was actually in the west block itself – you can only come out of it from the east block, which actually was the exit, after passing through the north block! True, there seemed to be no connection between the three blocks. ‘Seemed’ is the right word. There is a connection – underground! Ever heard of a temple with underground passageways? I tell you what, for a kid in this temple, it is Fun world and House of Horrors combined! And what’s more, its absolutely free!

It was fantastic to go through the ensuing tunnels underground, but it was equally dangerous. “Once you go forward, there is no looking back”. The idiom serves its purpose well here. If a person gets sick suddenly, there is no immediate exit unless you have to pass through the entire thoroughfare. One earthquake or perhaps building collapse and a stampede will take away hundreds of lives. And if there were exits, they were locked. And there are no security people inside either to help people out when emergency situations arose.

Forget the negative aspects and you are going to enjoy it as if you have never enjoyed in life. The carvings and sculptured are stunning and stupendous, giving you the maximum pleasure and asphyxiates you with breath-taking works of the Unknown. The devotees – or, rather, tourists – are forced to climb a flight of stairs and after walking a few steps, alight a flight of stairs. The same continues throughout the tunnel over and over again. The works of the Great Unknown keeps on coming and seems there is no end.

If it is difficult to walk through the tunnel-like passageway and admire the works for us, consider the plight of the person or persons who carved the Gods and scenes from several historic epics. A scene from Ramayana where Rama is about to go to the forest is so superbly carved that words fail us. The same is the case of ‘Panduranga’ himself among one of the works and the scene of the auditorium of UNO Assembly wherein several life-size and life-like delegates are sitting intently hearing the discussion of ‘the abolishing of bombs’.

At the north block – when we passed through thee underground passages – one has to climb three stairs and alight one of them, with each stair having their own specialty, in order to enter a stone train, yeah, a train, and the engine where even the various meters are painted. The brain behind all this has even thought of leaving a little space where coal is to be fed to the engine! We were now, saturated by the extent of magnificence all around and nothing seemed to surprise us! The architecture and planning of the temple – though culpable – is so full of pulchritude that not even the best of the modern-day buildings can even dream of boasting in surpassing – far less equaling – this temple.

In the east block, we were forced to go inside a bird and through the trunk of a mammoth elephant! By then, about an hour would have gone a-flying. We might have walked several kilometers! Finally we arrived at the exit and how exhilarated we were!

We all were of the opinion that there should be a warning at the entrance itself to the old people and heart patients about the nature of the temple. As it was, there was nothing of that kind and we found several people sitting on various steps inside the tunnel, catching their breath.

Thankfully, there was a hotel in the temple premises itself (what else, you might ask!) where people were bee-lining for. Anyway, later, when we exited through the gate, we were pretty sure that the outing would be carved – as in the Kykadi temple – in the dark grey tunnels of our minds.