Grass Routes

Travelling to Hampi during festival time.

I am seated on the terrace of a small house in one of the narrow by-lanes around Virupaksha temple. It belongs to a dhoti-clad Lingayat gentleman who proudly wears his caste on an amulet around his neck. Out to the right of me – past a row of squat middle-class homes, a fringe of coconut trees and a temple tank – is the ancient gopura, lit from below in alternating complementary colours and set off by a rocky landscape and a slivered commie moon. At dawn these streets will be swept, sprinkled with water and chalked with intricate kolam patterns. Filter coffee will be served up with the morning's news and last night's gossip.

Seen through a prejudiced lens, this could be any South Indian temple town. But I am in Hampi, where things are never quite what they seem. And the terrace I'm lounging on is really a trippy hippy café thick with Bob Marley posters, expressionless old European junkies and Mary Jane's heady perfume. We're all riding a slow merry-go-round of joints and wordless insinuations, and our host, Shiva, stands by, grinning and scratching his expansive armpit, to entertain the odd request for banana pancakes or masala milk tea. In the chair next to me a travelling English teacher named Andre holds up a 100-rupee note in his left hand and squints at the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi printed on it. His right hand is caressing a long roll of Manali hash. "Obama is such an inspiration," he says, pointing in the general direction of the temple. "We're all rooting for him to win tomorrow. My god, but those lights are beautiful! Those carvings! Ah!" Eyes glazed with awe, he turns back and resumes his inspection of the currency note. "Gandhi. Now there was a man. What a man. Without him, Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't have done what he did, you know. And perhaps Obama wouldn't be where he is right now." Shiva twirls a remote control in his hand and echoes, "Obama. Obama, yes. Not like George Bush." Behind him a large screen TV plays a kitschy promotional DVD put out by the local tourism department in celebration of the ongoing Hampi Utsav. The current segment features a DIY instructional video on how a one-man crew can assemble a bullock cart.

A short walk away on Bazaar Street, the epicenter of the annual festival, chaos is being harnessed in strange and creative ways. It's hard to find an adjective that would efficiently describe the thousands rushing the narrow street in front of the temple. Imagine Hampi as a sprawling international airport terminal (which, in many ways, it is). Imagine this terminal during peak tourist season. Now if you were to take all the passengers milling around and somehow stuff them into the aisle of a budget airline's ATR, then by some miracle of physics if you were to induce perpetual motion among the elements of this aisle, you'll begin to have a broad idea of what the Utsav looks and feels like. Layer on a few lorry-loads of dust, a Sunday market-style row of hawkers on either side, laser lights, fireworks, Asha Bhosle singing live, lathi-charging cops, flatulent cows, row upon row of horses, red and yellow umbrellas, sadhus and miraclemen and pimps and every other Incredibly Indian festival cliché, and you're nearly there. All that remains now is an appreciation of Hampi's landscape – and if you've never lived here, persisting with this thought experiment is going to be an exercise in futility.

Hampi, like the culture that birthed it, is a monster of many identities. Its text-book history, from the Vijaynagara Empire to the Islamic invaders, is only one little scrap in a fraying Lambani patchwork-quilt of mythologies. The local guides will let you in on some of the more colourful ones. If you're visiting, keep a special look out for Virupaksha or Khali who, in their Australian-accented English and infinite wisdom, will educate you on the more apocryphal origins of their hometown. When I was here six years ago during off-season, our guide Virupaksha – some of his acquaintances tell me that he has lately become a senior official in the tourist office – was relaxed enough to fully exhibit his storytelling powers. "Hampi was formed," said Viru, "back when Rama and Ravana were at war. Laxmana had just been injured by a poisoned arrow from the sky, and Hanuman was sent out to find the only plant – sanjeevani – that could cure the ailing prince. Hanuman, unable to locate sanjeevani in its designated hilly area, picked up the entire mountain and carried it back to the battlefield. He figured, the clever fellow, that the physicians could look for the herb themselves."

"Yes, yes, we know the whole story," I said to Virupaksha, impatiently. "So what's sanjeevani got to do with Hampi?" Viru smiled. "Well, you see, most people ignore the practical aspects of the Ramayana when they tell it. When Hanuman uprooted the mountain and flew with it across the country, many stones, pebbles and roots fell to the ground along the way. Hampi was formed when a particulary large shower of pebbles landed here in Karnataka." Of course, every town in India claims to have been part of the Ramayana in some way or other, but the Hampi connection, without pretense to logic, makes a vague sort of sense. The name 'Hampi' comes from the Tungabhadra river's old name -- Pampa, an integral part of Rama's original itinerary. Hampi is also supposed to be a geographic approximation of Kishkinta, the monkey king Vaali's old kingdom. "You don't believe me? Look there," Viru continued, pointing to a large depression in the ground. "When Sita was abducted by Ravana, at one point she leaned out of her flying chariot to scream for help. As she leaned, the pallu of her sari touched the ground, instantly causing this depression. What must have been a scrape in the sand back then for Sita is for you and me, insignificant mortals, this uneven ground." He paused, arm outstretched as if he were fishing for the right moral, and declared: "Time changes the scope of all things. Some ideas get bigger, others disappear altogether."

Here on the café terrace, the tourism promo video has just come to an end, and a long-haired Italian is changing the DVD to something from his CD-case. Music starts to play – Thom Yorke, wondering aloud, "How come I end up where I started...?" – and Shiva the café owner starts nodding his head to the syncopated beats. The Italian grins and says, "Raaadio-ead. You know Raaadio-ead?" Shiva mumbles under his breath, non-committal. The Italian turns and looks at me inquiringly.

"In Rainbows?" I offer.

"No, no, Raaadio-ead."

"Radiohead, for sure. I meant the album, though. The album's In Rainbows, isn't it?"

"No, no! Raaadio-ead!" he insists.

Radiohead seems to agree: "First you reel me out and then you cut the string..."

I no longer know what is what. I've lost my grip on reality, everything here is disconnected. None of the cultures here in Hampi has presence enough for me to hang onto. It's a free fall, a vortex town.

The Italian gets up and heads down the stairs, and Shiva seems relieved. He disappears into the kitchen and emerges in a couple of minutes with a Kannada movie DVD and a big grin. I shake my head and return to my banana porridge.

Published in i-Witness, Sunday Express.

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Rock Show
As Hampi warms up for this year's big party, our correspondent tries to get a finger on its pulse.
(This article was published in seven of the district editions of the New Indian Express, Karnataka)

It is three hours to the official inauguration of the Hampi Utsav by the BJP top brass. Young Sharanappa stands on a rickety table, peering over the top of a dirty yellow plastic tarpaulin. The tarp stretches across the front of Akash Ice Creams like a cyberpunk curtain, a haphazard interface to the chaos of Bazaar Street. There's shouting and loudspeakers and lots of police activity outside. Motorbikes are being dragged away, shutters are being forced down.

"You don't know what's happening?" asks the boy, curling his fingers in the air. "Advani is coming, CM is coming, many big people are coming. The police are scared of bombs, you see. So we're all being asked to close shop for the day."

He seems quite relaxed about the whole thing, however. Business goes on as usual behind the shop's makeshift shutter. Customers -- policemen, journalists, MLAs and commoners -- trickle in sporadically to beat the dust and heat, asking for Maaza and coffee and ice-cream. Whenever things get too slow, Sharanappa sticks his head out of a hole in the tarp and announces to the milling crowds: "Cool drinks only! No food! Come in for cool drinks!" His two sisters hawk plastic bags full of coconuts to apprehensive passersby through the other corner of the tarp.

Shopkeepers all around Virupaksha temple seem to be adopting a similar strategy to offset the minor inconvenience of this mammoth annual PR event. Flower and fruit sellers have stowed away their carts and baskets, standing on street corners instead, peddling their wares out of plastic bags like drug-dealers and pimps. Panhandlers, touts and painted men with knives piercing their cheeks continue to beg and hassle tourists, pleading and waving their money-plates from behind trees and barricades and the large yellow and red umbrellas lining the street. Straggly-haired hippies lean against available walls and regard the whole scene with detached bemusement. And all the while the police cars drive up and down, bristling with megaphones and lathis and dire warnings.

At the other end of the street, in the shadow of the Vijaya Vittala temple, 'Kitsch' is being redefined. A carpet of red and blue plastic chairs sit empty in front of a massive and garishly ornate stage set, where the BJP will soon roll up its saffron sleeve and flex some cultural muscle. An engineer in a cowboy hat sits at his sound console and checks all speakers. The music rising and dipping around the stage -- Dire Straits, Sarah Maclachlan and 70s Bollywood -- destroys any remaining pretense to coherence.

A large murmuring crowd, enticed by the unseemly playlist, gingerly moves from Virupaksha towards the stage, raising a cloud of dust with their shuffling feet. There, they will patiently wait for the VIPs, the musicians and the dancers to arrive. "We are here to be entertained," says Asif, a transvestite who has travelled here from Bellary. "I don't think we'll be disappointed."

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Photographs © Copyright 2008 Vinayak Varma