A trip in the afternoon!

During a slow weekend afternoon spent in my office quarters in this idyllic country posting, I decided to go visit a nearby situated ruins of a nearly 500 year old temple. The added thrill of getting to ratchet up 100 kilometers on the odometer of my lumbering hunk of a motorcycle to reach the said ruins was, I will confess, one of the reasons why I deigned to move at all; contrary to my predilection to imitate a python lying motionless after it has had its meal.

The impromptu trip was effected with great alacrity, and I must say that the ride to the destination was one of the better ones that I have had in the last couple of years.

I reached the object of my trip, the Bhuvaneshwari temple situated in Udaipur, Tripura at around four in the afternoon. The sky was a lush blue with a smattering of some dark clouds to across to break the monotony. The famed Indian monsoon had made the weather quite humid, though not as uncomfortable as it sometimes gets in these parts.

The temple itself is situated on the top of a hillock, rising steeply on the banks of the Gomati river. The temple, as it now remains, is constructed on the top of a raised platform. Said to be constructed during the 16th century AD by the local ruler, the structure is neither imposing, nor lavish, but can be termed as quite simple as far as Indian temples are concerned. However, the simplicity and diminutive size of the the structure renders it with a gravity and stateliness which is quite quaint and charming in its own right. It also reminded me of the terracotta temples of Bengal and, as many would attest, both seem to share a common inspiration. The trees and shrubbery near the location give the impression that the erstwhile Kings and the royal court had a conception of beauty intertwined with simplicity which was informed with their experience of the lands that they ruled,its ethos and culture; and of them being in connect with the nature and having a deep sense of appreciation for it. 

Within a stone’s throw from the temple are the ruins of the old royal palace. This building must have been fairly utilitarian, but considering the paucity of permanent structures from Tripura’s ancient and medieval history, it is one of the few places where one can feel the connect with the people that used to live here. I was strongly reminded the character the local tribal Raja, as described in the novel Aranyak (আরণ্যক) by the Bengali author, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Like the narrator of that novel who when first meets the descendants of the old tribal kings, imagines how they would have lived years ago in their heyday, I also found myself imagining how life would have been for the royal princes and princesses, and how they would have spent their days and the activities that they must have been engaged in, which now seem to us to be far removed from our own day to day lives.

As with most things in life, the things that nobody cares for turn out to be the most interesting. The ruins of a near replica of the Bhuvaneshwari temple structure stands on a verdant field, just adjacent to the protected ruins. This structure has remained unrestored (for reasons not known to me), it is overgrown with small plants and ferns sending roots down its brick and mortar. For me it was the most beautiful and poignant sight of this trip, a reminder that time will consume us all and nature will slowly reclaim back what was once hers; that there is not any deed borne of the sweat of men that can match nature’s longevity, but still we must create structures and edifices to proclaim our imagined greatness, for that is how nature herself has designed us.