Sunrise On The Rocks With Viru

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It's 6am and Viru's whispering at my window, startling me from my snooze. (I should just get up when the alarm sounds. Dozing makes me stupid and groggy.) Anyway, I've taken a room in Patna's family guesthouse with Nina and Simone, the the two German girls I met on the bus, who are right down the hall. I've bequeathed them my precious Nina Simone mixed CD. How could I resist? My window faces the front porch where Patna's daughter studies during the day, patiently sounding out English words, and her father sleeps at night on a thin roll-away mattress. Leaving my room, I carefully step over her brother, fast asleep on the floor in front of my door, and head for the loo where I smack my head on the doorway again! That's the third time. The house was built for hobbits.

So now I'm awake with a slight headache but very happy to be up so early. We're off in the buzzing autoriskshaw to climb to Malyavanta Raghunatha Temple, the highest point in Hampi for sunrise. Dawn is my favorite time of day; the horizon glowing with iridescent pastels gives me an unexplainable sense hope and rare opportunity to pause in silence before the day starts. Sunsets are also lovely all fired up in orange, pink and shots of purple but they used to make me cry when I was a kid because I never wanted the day to end.
Some things never change.

Hampi, the seat of the 14th century Vijayanagara empire, which spanned the three states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh, was the capital of the largest Hindu empire in post-mogul India, who later nearly leveled the place.

I watch the sunrise light up the 26 sq. km of scattered ruins, giant red boulders arranged as if by hand and the greenest vegetation I've ever seen. The racing river Tungabhadra is off in the north. It claimed the life of Viru's brother when he fell in at the Ganesha festival and couldn't swim. Viru's family doesn't pray to Ganesha anymore. Granite ridges on the other three sides are really the strangest and most perfect natural wonder I've ever seen.

Unlike the fantastic irrigation systems and reservoirs through out the ruins, not a single part of this rocky landscape was arranged by human hands. The rocks are stacked on top of one another like mounds of my Aunt Christine's perfectly imperfect profieroles. I heard a landscape architect at Harvard once argue that everything in nature is designed by humans at some level. At some point in history, he pronounced, someone placed a rock or a tree somewhere with purpose and intention. Fine. It's fun to contemplate such theories, but my bullshit meter goes into overdrive in the presence of such ego-driven philosophical tail-chasing. I disagreed with him then; I disagree with him now and I'd just love to hear the old windbag explain his way out of Hampi.

Just as the sun rays break over the hills, a priest in one of the nearby temples hits "play" on his boombox. chants and prayers rip through the silent valley and I remember where I am. An ant-sized man below carries an enormous tar covered half dome basket used to ferry people across the river. He must be off to work. The first truck on the road sounds his horn on the windy road announcing his presence.
Hmph. Sunrise is over.

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