Last year we had a visitor from Mumbai – one of Vivek’s
childhood friend –AB. He enjoyed his
stay at the farm and kept reminiscing about a similar place which he had
visited just once as a young kid - his father’s ancestral home near Sirsi. He
had lost his father at a very young age after which he had lost all ties with
his relatives in Sirsi. He expressed a
keen desire to visit his family temple to honour his fathers’ memory. He carried a faded photo of an idol of Lord
Ganesha in his wallet. This photograph used to be in his Dad’s wallet and
presumably, it was a photo of the idol in the family temple. We offered to
accompany him on his return journey upto Sirsi, visit the temple and then return
back to the farm.
But this wasn’t as easy as we imagined it would be. For one,
AB did not know the exact name of the temple or the village. And he knew no one
whom he could ask. Out of the recesses of his memory, he said the name sounds
like ‘Aksal –or Aksar or something like that” .
Now that was a very fine and precise way to hunt for a
village with a tiny Ganapati temple in the vast hinterland of North Karnataka!. Nevertheless I launched a Google search. In a place where a single vowel can change
the location of a village by a few hours of almost un-negotiable roads, it was going to be a challenge. For example,
Hudil and Hadil are two villages separated by 30 kms of dirt road through dense
forests, Manaki and Manki are separated by 50 kms of a winding ghat road. So how in the world was I going to find a
village whose name itself we were not sure of?
 |
| Bumpy mud roads |
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| Winding Ghat roads |
After a lot of searching I found one village called ‘Agsur’. This was the closest to what he had
pronounced. He jumped at it and said –
yeah yeah maybe it is that!!! So I
started describing the location and route – it was about 65 kms from Sirsi and
down the ghat. “Oh no! then that is not the place - It couldn’t have
been that far and I don’t think we went down a ghat” he said.
By now I was beginning
to doubt whether we would ever find the place.
Then he came up with another hint – I felt I was playing a treasure-hunt
game – “I think it was on the road to Yellapur and it did not take us very long
to get there from Sirsi” he said.
Ok! – So I marked the
50 kms distance between the two towns of Sirsi and Yellapur and enlarged the
Google map to its maximum so that all the smaller village names could be seen.
Scanning the map inch by inch, I travelled about 10 kms when I spotted it
‘Agasal’ - closer to his first pronunciation of
‘Aksal’! Yes probably this is it he said
but now his enthusiasm was a bit toned down.
He had realised the complexity caused by these similar sounding village
names. Nevertheless, it was the closest
sounding name and the location and
distance from Sirsi held promise.
So we decided to
drive down. In the event that we don’t find his ancestral temple, we would just
visit the famous Marikamba temple of Sirsi and also another place which has
been on my ‘Want-to-see-in-this-lifetime’ list – the famous ‘Sahasralinga sculptures’ These are countless Shiv-lingas sculpted on
the rocks in the Shalmala river, almost all the rocks in the rocky river bed
have a Shiv-linga sculpted on them.
So we set off in two
cars, AB following us. A quick visit to
the Marikamba temple, although there were very long queues, and then we were on the Yellapur road. After
the 9 kms mark we slowed down and started looking for any signs of a temple or
any directions to the village. There
were none! There was no mobile signal to
enable us to check the location of the village. We travelled about 3 kms further
- from my earlier checking of the map, we had already passed the village and
missed it totally. Then we saw a temple on the right. It was a fairly large
temple called “Batte Ganapati Devasthan”
We stopped the cars – and went into the temple. As we offered our prayers to the beautiful
idol of Ganapti, AB whispered to Vivek “This is not the one”. Our search had not ended. Just then a couple
of men walked in. We asked them about another Ganapati temple in the vicinity
and also the location of Agasal village.
They weren’t too sure of a temple, but they knew about the village and
gave us rough directions. AB pulled out
his wallet and showed them the photograph of the Ganapati idol, but they had no
clue.
Now we set out on the road they had described. We were to
travel some distance back and then return to this same spot for our onward
journey to Sahasralinga, so we left AB’s car outside the temple and decided to
carry on the search in just our vehicle.
I was getting intermittent signal on my mobile, but could not see a road
to the village. We spotted the turn
mentioned by the men in the temple and as we turned in, we spotted a motorcycle
approaching us from a distance. We stopped the car and decided to ask the rider
for further directions. The area was
desolate and probably we would not meet another soul until we reached the
village (if we could find it). We got
out of the car and waved down the bike.
They were two of them on the bike, we asked them whether they knew about
the village. the temple and AB showed them the photograph too. After a lot of
discussion between themselves (in rapid fire Kannada), they explained a route
to us. I had difficulty following their dialect of Kannada, but I gathered that
the tar road would end at some point and then we would have to follow a mud
road that went downhill. We set off. The
tar road ended, the mud road was as bumpy and dusty as you can imagine.
Not a soul in sight, not a house or
shop. The forest was dense and silent.
And then the road bifurcated into two!
Which one now? Both went
downhill, but one of them appeared to go at a sharper gradient. So
we took the steeper one. But after about
a kilometre or so, the road kept getting worse and the shrubs and trees seemed
to close in on either sides. And then a
sharp bend, sounds of an approaching vehicle....and what arrives in front? A huge JCB –an earth moving machine, blocking
our entire path. We got out and asked the driver about the village. He said there was no village down that road,
only denser forests. So we had a unique experience of travelling reverse for almost
a kilometre in the dense Sirsi forest with a huge JCB bearing down on us the
entire path. Our 4x wheel drive sure
came in handy here and AB was glad that he had left his car behind. We reached the bifurcation and then took the
other path. Barely 100 meters away we spotted a faded weather beaten milestone.
I could decipher the alphabets ‘A’ and ‘G’ in Kannada! Yes we were finally on the right track to
Agasal.
We entered the sleepy village There were just 3 or 4 houses and the road
ended abruptly. Vivek noticed the temple
just beyond where the road ended. We
parked the car and walked to the temple.
It was in fairly good condition, but locked and the interiors were pitch
dark. There was a record of melodious shlokas playing softly from
within. We peered in through the grill,
but could not see anything at all. AB
had a lost look around him as he said “I cannot remember whether this was the
temple, I wish the door was open, I wish
there was a light inside” there was a break in his voice and he looked away to
hide his unshed tears. We stood in
silence for a few minutes and offered our prayers and then started walking
towards the car.
Just as we neared the car, we spotted a man dressed in a
traditional attire, holding a platter laden with coconuts, bananas and flowers
walking in the direction of the temple.
We spoke to him and tried to explain about our search. He was going in to perform the Puja. He did not seem too friendly, but we followed him as he opened the temple door and
switched on the lights. The idol was
indeed of Lord Ganesha, but not the one
in the photograph. A little while later,
the man’s wife walked in with a bowl of ‘Payasam’ or kheer. She placed it inside the Sanctum as her
husband continued with the Puja. She then
turned to us to enquire about where we came from. On hearing my broken kannada, she switched to
Hindi. That was a relief and we could explain better as to why we came to
this village in search of the temple. AB
pulled out his wallet and showed her the photo.
“Oh! This is the photo of the
idol in our ancestral home!” She exclaimed!
And then she asked AB his full name and it turned out that they shared
the same surname. Her husband had by
then finished the Puja and joined us, she explained to him in Kannada and he
looked at AB with surprise. They were
actually long lost cousins!!!
They invited us to their home and offered us Prasad of the delicious Payasam. The man pulled out some old books and looking
through them told us that years back
AB’s father had deposited some money with the temple requesting that a Puja be
performed every year on AB’s name. They
used to perform the Puja but they had no address to which they could send the
Prasad. AB was overcome with
emotion. He wrote down his address for
them and soon it was time for us to
leave. We thanked them immensely for
their hospitality and left.
We drove on to Sahasralinga and marvelled at the sculptures
on the rocks on the river bed.
Then AB
drove on to Mumbai – a happy man and we returned back to the farm.
My thoughts were on the seemingly strange obstacles that
came our way, that delayed us more than we expected –- the long queues at the Marikamba temple,
missing the left turn from the highway because we lost the mobile signal, the wait at the Batte Ganapati Devasthan, the
wrong turn down the mud road until we came face to face with the JCB, and then
finally waiting outside the locked
temple for a long time before walking back to the car. If none of these delays had happened, we
would have not met the couple and we would have not been able to unravel the
mystery of the faded photograph in AB’s wallet.
All was well and that ended well!
