Monday Musings 240 - A drink for the 'caves'

Monday Musings 240  - A drink for the 'caves'

My first trip to Ajanta and Ellora caves has left me gasping. I do not understand the art of sculpting or cannot discern the quality  in murals, neither do i have a connoisseur bone in my body about these things. However what i saw definitely touched me in strange ways. Here are a few ways in which it did.

The board outside Ellora said that it took more than 200 years to make them. I find that to be overwhelming. It is inconceivable for me that a group of people, most likely monks would hammer away for generations and carve out such exquisite geometric structure, such fabulous design thinking, such perfect symmetry and such intricate engravings - all of this managed successfully while cutting away one single rock from the top (compare this that all modern structures are built bottoms up). Some caves are Buddhist, some Jain and some Hindus. Some people must take lessons from this happy coexistence. 

The Ajanta caves are breathtaking. They practically hang atop a small river. They are universally Buddhist in themes. I will leave the religion aside for a moment. What mesmerized me the scale at which monks have worked with the rocks. I cannot even begin to imagine the mind of men who would have first decided to hew a rocky mountain and create an elaborate labyrinth of prayer room of sorts. It took me a while to deal with that choking sensation when i realized that the largest of those caves was prayer room almost two times the size of houses that most of us live in. All of that cut through the rocks!!

I wonder about the motivations of such men who would for years together chisel the lifeless mountains and carve out breathtaking giant size deities, with themes, eye for detail and embellishments that will put a Sanjay Leela Bhansali set to shame - all of that some 2000 years ago. I wonder what would such a person be as a child, youth and and an adult. I wonder what would be his fabric, what would be his self talk, what would he think every day morning (and cheekily i also ask what would be his thoughts on a Monday morning!!). 

I wonder what would be his last thoughts as he would be lying on his last moments and would have seen what he had managed to create out of the recalcitrant and lifeless rocks - how much life he had breathed into them. Would he be smug? would he be vain? Would he just shrug it away as such possessed men are wont to do?

They said that the monks who worked on these caves would mediate while they were working on these caves. I am not sure about it - may be the making of the caves was meditative. Who knows?

As one stands at a vantage point and witness the panorama of caves from outside, before one has visited the caves and witnessed the magnitude of human creativity, one is impressed. When one repeats the panorama after a visit of each of those caves one would perhaps feel tiny and petty. One cannot help but experience the enormity of human application around and it does not rest on the shoulders lightly. It has a power to push through every sinews of your body and soul and demand a life that must yield much more than what it has yielded so far. It is a challenge only the blind and insensitive will be able to ignore. 

I wonder who were the men who assiduously built something like this. I wonder if they knew that it will last 2000 years and still inspire. I wonder if i will leave behind something for even 2000 minutes. 

Gosh - i need a drink. !

Guru