An Impulsive Trip to Second Sun Temple of the World

An impulsive trip, to the second largest Sun temple in the world –Modhera.
A travel towards the north from Ahmadabad, around 95 km from the city, had its own fun, as we drove in two cars, along with the person who was teaching product photo shoot the whole day, accompanied by his lady. As always the aperture was kept open throughout the travel, trying the hand in long exposures, to get the lyrics of light out the empty roads with street lights. In fact the fun part of the travelling is not in the place where we need to travel, but to just travel. After some communications and miscommunication between the cars, both landed in the site. People had their own share of activities to combat cold over there- the beedi. New ones were put forward, and rightly so, our sharan took one, and tried to act very smart, which just had very varying results and effects. As we walked in past the thoran entry, the colourful lighting welcomed, or at least glared all the way till the Sun temple was visible. It is not that, they went off, but they were replaced by some serious spotlighting. The creativity of the lighting experts must have reached the heights, it seems. I am being so mean here. The lighting had all commercial meaning, but no ethical meaning. The land of diversity showed me one more here. Certain heritage structures, doesn’t even allow to carry tripods or use flash or sometimes even the camera itself. But here, there were at least more than hundred different lights, of different colours, trying to illuminate and showcase this world’s second sun temple, at Modhera. It was such a pity to see the heritage getting hurt so much, just for the sake the commercial means. There were telecast running “Live”, with performances happening, with the temple Shikara as the back drop, just to exemplify the Vibrating Gujarat. There can’t be any justification under any circumstances. Yeah, we are moving ahead, our values being broken along with the fast pace of life, and we don’t have time to preserve the heritage or the past, but at least some concern not to hurt them to the minimum.
So as we went through all of these, and during the process, I came across this lady, expressing herself, in fact controlling her from expressing herself, from the performance happening in the stage. As rightly thought, she is a classical dancer. Hear more now. She is from Trichy, brought up at Mumbai -an orthodox Hindu Brahmin lady. It was more exciting to converse with a real artist there, to know about her and to know that she had just pursued Dance as her career and nothing else. It was heartening to hear about the passion speaking out aloud in her Life, gave back some inspiration of the day. The spice was just getting hot, as people surrounded all of us nine, in a chai shop. Sharan, came to know that she is a dancer, and tried to show his familiarity, by saying his friend is a dancer too. His intellectual level didn’t stop there, as he tried explaining the dance form, as something which is about standing sitting and turning. I was helped by her in holding my chai, so that I can laugh out loud falling down on the floor. Just couldn’t imagine someone trying to explain Bharatanatyam like that. I hope she felt good by me taking out the frustration.
As we started back, we were on the way to eat in the roadside “shiv shakti” for Dal Batti. A rajasthani dish which are in spherical shape, and they will be crushed into pieces to be mixed with the dal, followed by butter milk, ghee mix, some sweet with cashew toppings.
The trip was coming to an end as we started back, and as I was feeling sleepy, just woke up to know that a lorrys’ back was just a whisker away from the wiper of the car.