Down to Dust – A Crumbling Journey of the Historical City of Hampi

Bricks have crumbled down. The mud that heald the bricks has melted in the rain. The stones lay bare. Pile on pile. The house abandoned. The sky suddenly looks bare and clear. The levelled houses now enable you to look beyond the horizon without stretching your neck.

I have walked for hours. Into deserted villages. Not a human being in sight. I see houses have been made secure homes of arcane has weaved a wonderful webs from crumbled wall to wall.

I take pictures one after another. I pause. I click.  The floods have just ripped houses. The inners of the house lays exposed as if the intestines of a living being are ripped and pulled open. The blue doors could be seen from afar. It stands precariously across stones. There is not a sight of a person anywhere near. If I did manage to see a stray person, I’d stop and speak with them. It was a relief to know that the houses started to crumble in the day, and before the houses could collapse, evacuation arrangements were being made.

                               

This may have been used to cradle a child. The child is not seen anywhere. Nor the mother. The saree hangs from the ceiling.

The coal has gone cold.

 This house lies abandoned. I walk into the house, looking around. I sit on the floor for sometime, and envision how life would have been spread, should things were equal. I know it is unsafe to walk into houses that could collapse further, due to the slightest movement around it. I look around, and the bumpkins catch my attention. This must have been the only food in the house.

The pumpkins must have been stored for consumption for a later date. Despite the hunger and destruction, it looks like this has been safe. It also shows that no one in the village thought to take it away for themselves.

Haunted.  A thin filter of Cobweb has curtained the house.

I cannot resist entering these “once upon a time” dwelling. I want to see how it feels to see the world from inside the house. All I can see are the stray rays of the sun filtering into the crumbling house. I see more shadows than clear light.
The Hanuman Temple stands amidst all the destruction and the fury of nature.

Hanuman is worshipped by villagers as a protective boundary guardian for their village. He is a god who is untouched by the menacing effects of Shani ( the god of ill-luck and vengeance)

Hanuman Stands at peace
The god a mute spectator to all suffering around

It is ironical that the temple has been untouched with any of gods fury.
The people of the village had only recently
built the temple.

All the worship
had gone into building the temple strong
Only if their house were built with similar faith.
There is gloom all around me. Stillness is all pervasive. My steps stagger to go into the village. I have walked long. I stand and pause. I look around. I put my camera aside for a while. There sure cannot be two pictures of the same kind. But, it’s still all the same. The mood is still unsettling.

I suddenly see colour.

My eyes look further. I see an old man walking with a stick in his hand. He stops.
I reckon, it is a difficult walk down memory lane for him. That is the only pink I see around me.

I try to catch the contrast in my camera.

He walks quietly. Slowly.

Minding his steps. He takes great care not to look at the ruins around him.

My eyes are fixed at him, until he disappears...                    

Muted Silence

The man in the pink turban is slowly swallowed into the colossal crumbling walls...

Two Little Children Lost in the Crumble

I notice that I have been followed by two little children.
They must be now all too familiar with “outsiders” coming to see their village. I wonder what they think of “curious” onlookers like me. I see the same curiosity in their eyes...

I am almost stunned at the beauty of these women. It is afternoon and I walk up to them for a chat. There is silence. We gaze together at what our eyes can reach. Nothingness.

They ask me if I have had my lunch. They offer me lunch. But I politely decline.

I know that if they serve me lunch, then they will go on an empty stomach that evening. The women have managed to salvage a little onion from their fields. This is the only house that has stood the test of the floods. The women tell me that they were saved only because the house is newly constructed.

Innocence and Experience

I love being with children. They took an instant liking to me. I felt one in their company.

The more I spoke to them, I realized the more students came out from their classrooms. The smiles on their faces, despite the difficult times were the hope I carried with me. I did not have the heart to ask them about the struggles that they would have known or seen through their elders. I just stuck to asking them what they study in school. Do they like coming to school. Most of the children had lost their books in the floods.

Each of the children want to be photographed. And in all of the noise and giggle and fun around me, I try to capture some!

A midday meal brings children to school. They eat a little and take the rest for the other sibling at home.

The classroom has ben converted into a make-shift dwelling. Here is a mother who was rescued from the floods and delivered her child in the school.

Tinned dwelling

Myopia

The victims of the  2007 flood need attention. They  are a forgotten lot. Their needs are as important as anyone elses.

These people affected in a similar catastrophe in 2007 are living a life in a limbo. They continue to live in make shift, tined, temporary shelter. There is no way the civic authorities are going to listen to the demands, now that there is one more on their plate. These men and women continue to wait for compensation and alternative houses.

This woman (a widow, a dalith, a labourer...call her what you will...) has been waiting for many years now to move away from the tinned shelter that she now calls home.

Will it be an endless wait for her?