Dragonflies are Kamikaze

When riding at 90kmph on NH4, please wear a full face helmet. If I could record the taps on my helmet, I could surely use those for percussion in any kind of classical or rock number. I’ll never know how many dragonflies reached the other side after hitting us. After 9 hrs of drive, interrupted by tea and snack breaks, we reached Hampi market. It was 3 in a pleasant afternoon. Hampi is a small laidback place, a bit crowded at this time of the year owing to Dussera festivities.

The past is so pronounced that only a dork will be unable to imagine how the city must’ve been 800 years ago. And when you hear of places like Queen's Bath, only the dorkest of dorks would not want to imagine how it must've been at that time.

Temples, as always, are history etched in stone. They paint a comprehensive picture of contemporary art, science, commerce, society, and everything under the medieval sun. So what does this pillar, with a statue of a man playing the damroo in front and thin columns on its sides, tell us? Not just about the musical inclination of the people. It so happens that striking those columns with knuckles (or wooden sticks) produces the sound of damroo. Other pillars have statues of artists with mridanga, dhol, and other classical musical instruments and striking the columns produces the sounds of corresponding instruments. Look at the column at the right side of this statue, and one in the background. This one is octagonal, the other is fluted. It's easy to see that these columns have distinct diameters and unique shapes, which apparently help in producing sounds of different notes and pitches. Now here's something awesome. Notice the stone structure placed at the top of the far column. Everyone has a similar but different structure at the top. The weight of this structure (coupled with the geometry of each column) decides the tension value in the body of the column. This is why all of them sound different. Finely controlling all the parameters they were able to make rock music, literally. There were also columns that were as sonorous as the brass bells used in Hindu temples. And then there is a pillar, each of whose columns produces a note in the octave. Seriously, I can do a combined PhD in civil engineering, material science, and music. Inscriptions have it that there were about 56 such pillars with hundred of columns. When played, the sound of music travelled as far as a kilometer.

Then there were depiction of trade with the Chinese, the Arabs, and the Europeans. Other interesting things that I noticed in the temple were the many-in-one animal sculptures. This, for example shows a bull and an elephant. Cover the right side of the picture and the bull shows up, and covering the left side reveals the elephant. There were other similar sculptures that had upto seven animals in one - monkey, frog, horse, bull, bird, human all of them. I asked the guide the reason for having such things, for these don't have any mythological significance. He didn't have a perfect answer. He said "Probably the king let the artists do whatever they wanted." I bought his reason, "That must've been a cool King."

Other places around Hampi had impressive geometric designs, aqueduct and drainage networks, and shades of Hindu and Muslim architectures among other things. In the evening we caught Dussera processions - impressive with incessant dances and martial arts displays. We had a look around the next day. Had a wonderful meal at the highly reccommended Mango Tree Restaurant, and traced our way back to Bangalore. We didn't miss The Dragonfly Orchestra on the way. Arriving back, I think the medieval engineers did a better job at drainage management.

18 hours of bike ride in two days, I need a butt massage.

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I've put my snaps from Hampi trip at Flickr.