Temple towns and Ghost towns

One of the good thing about nothing being permanent in life is that we get to grow as a person. We are not stones which can be carved only once, instead we are more like a jelly that keeps changing with time and circumstances. While some can argue that the core qualities of our personality never changes, but I think life can throw a curveball in such intensity and speed that a person can change their core, Then again, people say that your character comes through in such situations. But, tell me what even is character?

Anyway, the growth that I want to talk here is about my fresh new perspective on travel. I was not much into travelling for logistical and safety issues, you know the 'will there be good toilets?', 'I'm gonna be on my periods' etc. But my recent mandatory travel across the Southern India made me change my opinion on travel. I was a good traveller this time. My experiences were varied across the places that I got to travel.

Our first stop in the temple town was a college. Sleep deprived but high on energy. The campus and the students reminded me of my past. I could see myself in many young girls there, plaited hair, wearing a salwar, excited yet reserved. It was in this college where I gave my first acting performance, it was more of an voice acting performance though. I was a fraudster. Now, I have felt like an imposter for most part of my life, but playing a fraudster was different. How many times have we committed frauds? The emotional kind, the financial kind, the physical kind. Are all frauds considered as something bad? The society has different tolerance level for accepting frauds. The moral compass, the feeling of self-righteousness etc may sometimes consume us even at the littlest deviation from the supposed line of  'right'. It is hard to strike a balance where we take ourselves with just the right amount of seriousness. This visit of ours had its own share of surprises. The students were more aware than we expected them to be, so when they were answering correctly to our questions, it sort of felt like when someone does you wrong and you want to be mad at them but they are quick to apologise. Like geez, please play your part, Sir. 

After the eventful visit to the college, it all seemed like a good start. Until I had a panic attack in a temple after almost three years. I'm surprised how'd I make out of that place without breaking down. I realised that though the mind might forget, the body remembers. And I am proud of myself to come out of that and not let that experience shadow my rest of the travel. It might seem strange to people, especially men, when I say I do not feel safe in temples no matter how much I appreciate the architecture. Everything is contextual, like my new but old friend says.

Towards the end of our temple visit, I found good company. That made me feel better. The person I was dying to talk so wasn't available. And when they were, I didn't feel as better as I expected to. It all felt a bit anti-climatic. The shops outside the temple reminded me of the by lanes of my city, the pilgrim sites that I got to visit with my family. I bought a little something for my friend and my little sister.

Temple towns have different air to them, as they should. Everyone either seems to have just had 'darshan' or is about to have 'darshan'. The amount of history the land must have seen is amazing and fascinating. Everything is religious there, Everything is okay in the name of religion. 

We hopped on from one temple town to another, with a pit stop at a ghost town. I remember writing about the titular ghost town, but the blogger seems to have ghosted that text (see what I did there? :p). This ghost town was at the southern most tip of the Indian mainland. As our bus passed through the roads of this ghost town, it felt eerie. The land that ones inhabited thousands, now lay in ruins. The frames of few odd buildings remained. As we began our journey to this town, my old nemesis, my old companion pain returned to greet me. I made sure to treat it well and I respected its presence.

The very ruins of the ghost town became a subject of interest for the tourist and all of them were eager to click photos amidst the ruins. People smiling at the camera, posing with their hands and legs, all of this in the backdrop of the ruins. I couldn't help but wonder how can one even think of doing all this, then I remembered that humans like novelty like this. But for a second, imagine you see people clicking themselves smiling at places like war sites, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or in a place where young animals are kidnapped from their habitat and put in enclosures against their will(this place is Zoo). How insensitive would that seem, but not to them. They are just there to get an escape from their everyday life.

As I spent more time, I began to wonder what the day when the cyclone stuck the town was like. The inhabitants did not know what was to come would take everything away. The very wind that helped them set their sails had destroyed their ships. It was at that moment when I had to volunteer to model for a few pics at the stalls near the beach. I did not like how I looked, but people liked the pictures. After a couple of hours, we visited another temple and walked a bit on an old bridge which seemed to tremble as vehicle crossed it. I swear I thought I'd have another panic attack seeing so much water around me. But I survived.

On our way back, I listened to songs sitting in the train while most people around buried themselves in books. I was happy that I made it through. I had four days to recharge my self before another travel and my periods were waiting to join me.