Khajuraho – it lives up to its fame, of 15 seconds, until the bitter afternote kicks in. So far, the state highways and city roads in Madhya Pradesh were immaculate, but for a town that has a dedicated airport, railway station, and possibly a dozen luxurious estates, the access road to the town of Khajuraho was surprisingly quite disappointing. The international airport, a modern structure that bore a desolate look, was inoperational due to COVID back then. The restaurants served over-priced, continental dishes and coffee that was lukewarm and machine-made. The only reading material my hotel could provide on Khajuraho was a government-printed 3-page pamphlet – which mentioned an ongoing, live excavation. Excited, on further inquiry, I was informed the pamphlets had been printed in the early 2000s and were in circulation since, no re-prints or edits were considered necessary. Needless to say, the live excavation was no longer live.
Listed on UNESCO’s world heritage sites since 1986, Khajuraho has for decades been exposed to international tourism. Most guides and travel operators are proficient in multiple European languages – English comes naturally to even the touts selling you saris, tribal art or jewelry. They make such an emphatic case for this COVID-hit town and businesses in fluent English, you almost forget you are in the middle of a 5000-person town in the middle of India.
For all the fame, and erotic-infamy, Khajuraho has been bestowed with, the result was a dampener. Owing to it being built in the throes of the 10th century, in the midst of jungles and away from actively occupied towns, the group of temples which make up the Khajuraho site, remained protected from the onslaught of western crusaders in the subsequent centuries. It also meant that not many travel writers or record keepers knew of its existence; not much has been established clearly about its origins. There are multiple stories doing the rounds, numerous explanations for the stone carvings, and way too much emphasis on the temple’s “erotic art”. This observation is based on the Western group of temples, there are Eastern and Southern as well and apparently only a fourth of the original clump could be salvaged. Khajuraho should definitely be more famous for the stonework, the stories that the scriptures convey, the details on the carvings. There are stories etched on the outer walls, the inner sanctums, the doorways, the ceilings – stories of spirituality, life, war, men and women, longings of the heart and of the loins, and our numerous Gods and Godesses. A lot of these stories are, of course, open to interpretation and we were extremely lucky that Anurag Shukla Sir was our guide – a man with knowledge enough to write books on the Khajuraho group of temples and humble enough to answer our amateurish questions! He doesn’t waste a moment before diving into the ocean of history the place is.
His first instruction was to forget everything we’d read or heard so far and to absorb as much of his information that we could. Connecting the dots with the places we’d seen in Orchha, the history lessons from school that we miserably tried to recall, and understanding the significance of motifs, their placements, and of Gods and Goddesses that are long forgotten in today’s ‘Ram Rajya‘, the half-day tour left us hungry for so much more. While most temples have similar stone carvings, the trained eye points out the subtle differences in the sculptures due to changes in possibly decades and teams of architects and workmen.
In the sound and light show that’s run every evening in the premises of the Western group of temples, Amitabh Bachchan’s voice reverbs through the open lawns, transporting you into an era of horse-backed soldiers and Gods descending onto the Earth. Towards the end, he says, “O bold artist of Khajuraho, your song lives on in stone.” It does, indeed. And what a marvellous song it is! If only we knew how they intended us to hear it.
While I’ve traversed through national parks in open Jeeps and Gypsys, and been on foot during numerous treks, I hadn’t so far trekked in a national park. There wasn’t thick foliage but quite a handful of predators could still be around, we were told. After all, the jungle was theirs. While people are often afraid of chancing upon a tiger or a leopard, it was the sloth bear that’s more fearsome due to its higher propensity for unpredictability.
We were on “A walk with the Pardhis“, in Panna National Park, an initiative to sustainably assimilate the Pardhis into civilisation. With their history and heritage boasting of having hunted with Mughals, British and everyone in between, the Pardhis are an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe in Panna. While the world around them moved on from kingdoms to colonies to a democracy, forests reduced and wilderness lost, the Pardhis could not keep up with the times and all they could sustain themselves with was hunting (of late, poaching) – it was in their blood, after all. The last decade however spelled a very different present for them – NGOs, corporate CSR initiatives together with the government have spread information, education and vocation to give the tribe a chance at living better and easier. They still keep their links to the jungles with experiences like “A walk with the Pardhis” which is where tourists like us come in – our curiosity to understand life in the jungles, to experience eco-tourism gives them a chance to re-live their past, share their horrors and regale us with their vast, unbounded understanding of the wilderness. One of the earliest success stories of the initiative is Reesna Pardhi, a 20-something girl, among the first Pardhis to be educated, now a naturalist with the Taj. Reesna, along with two other tribe members, a younger teenager and a man in his 40s, were flanking us at each step, their eyes roving in all possible directions for the lightest movement in the vicinity, ears attuned to calls of animals around and all the while entertaining our questions, introducing us to wild mushrooms, onions, the trees around and how they used a certain leaf or flower or even bark, sloth bear markings and anthills (not to mention the casual remarks about snakes! *shivers*). I wondered what we’d do if a predator came along because why not. Knowing the response would be pretty scary, I never asked it out loud.
As we rested atop a hill, with miles and miles of greenery ahead of us, a peacock called nearby, not a distress call, we were told. The teenager went to take a look, prancing and care-free, as if approaching an ice cream vendor in the city streets. The others didn’t seem the least worried about her. Once she was back, reporting no sighting, we were captivated with stories of hunting and living in the jungles, monsoons lashing across their tents, how women lasted through periods, how hunting (read: poaching) assignments came about. Even until a few years ago, groups of men would go hunting for tigers and leopards, if the money was right. How do you hunt a tiger, I was curious.
“We look for tiger pug marks, track its movements, lay out a trap and then we call,” suddenly issuing a deep-throated growl. He could also mimic leopards, sloth bears, peacocks, grey francolins and red pheasants, he added, bemused at our stunned faces. For the next few seconds, the façade of the tough hunter fell away, the pain evident in his voice and eyes, as he went on, “Once the tiger has been trapped, we lie in wait at a distance, sometimes the entire night while the animal howls in pain, the metal traps becoming tighter, the more they struggled. Often the tiger razes everything within reachable distance in anger, at his helplessness; bamboo shoots fallen, tree barks clawed, bushes torn apart. We can’t even shoot the animal out of its misery because a bullet hole will tarnish the skin and bones, reducing value.” Silence clouds us, similar to the heavy black ones, at a distance.
He continues, more to convince himself than us, “We didn’t make the rules. We didn’t know how else to survive. But now we do.”
“Do you all prefer living in the villages better?” LB asked.
“Obviously. Now there’s a chance that we will survive beyond 40,” he softly responded.
We started on our walk back to the car, almost 2 kms away, the men silently walking in the rear. The Pardhi girls seemed to like me enough to share their dreams and blurt their fears – they didn’t want to get married anytime soon, wanted jobs, wanted to give their parents a life no one had so far dared to dream, but they also wanted to stay close to their roots. They are afraid they’re going to be the last of their tribe that knows these jungles like the back of their hand. Why would the next generation, born in the villages, venture into the jungles? Would they retain the wealth accumulated over generations? Would they be able to tell a tiger’s call from that of a leopard? These questions the girls have been living with are not easy to answer. A walk scheduled for forty-five minutes became two hours long and yet I felt like we’d barely even scratched the surface.
The series finale to follow soon! But for all those salivating at the thought of travelling to Madhya Pradesh, reach out to Wandercue Travel, because they will ensure you have the time of your life.
Graciously Yours!
Inking The Thinking. 
As always, mesmerising descriptions and, despite your lack of enthusiasm for aspects of this place, you still convey enough of the magic to make me envious of your trip and want to go there. I think I’m hungering for India again! 😀
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