Our visit to Mamallapuram in India

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In January 2008 visited India and our first local trip was to Mamallapuram which is about 60kl from Chennai.
We took the local bus from the very large bus depot in Chennai and was treated to the most interesting journey. It took us more than an hour to get out of the city alone. There were people on bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, donkey carts, tricycles, small cars and hand drawn carts; all laden with people and goods of the most diverse nature possible. Mother and three children going to school; donkey cart with bales of something which resembled cloth; bicycle with about 20 or 30 aluminium pots; trucks withbricks; trucks with vegetables and fruit. What a delight : India at its very best. People hard at work and its just 6.30 am. Children walking to school in twos and threes and fours, all in neat uniforms clutching books dearly to theih bosims. As we crawled past the school bare footed children sweeping the school verandah and classrooms , their shoes all neatly lined against the school wall.
I befriended Xavier a shop owner whose daily routine entails him travelling from Mamallapuram to Chennai by bus to buy fruit and vegetables and transport his bulky purchase back to Mamallapuram on the same bus. He, together with the bus driver, were vaguely amused and surprised at my use of the native Tamil language. I showed off a little by reading some sign boards that were written in Tamil.
When we got off in Mamallapuram we were welcomed with a most refreshing extract of lemon and coconut juice at Xaviers shop. I explained to Xavier that I wanted to buy a bronz or brass statue of our Ganesha . hHe promptly made a few phone calls and we were soon on our way to a foundary.Bronz casting in its earliest form was still being used to produce the most intricate and excusite pieces of sculpture which is so India.The master designer and owner of the rather crude foundry is world reknown and had just finished a commission by the German government and his samplngs were on display at present in Genmany. Un fortunately he did not have the ece that I was looking for.
The area is world reknown for all forms of carvings especially in stone. All over the areas as one walks in the sea side town you can hear the clinking of hammer on chisel chipping away at stone by whole families.
There are carving at various stages of progress all along the dusty and in mainly unpaved streets. Huge rocks on the sea shore have the most intricate and detailed carvings, and one can only imagine some form of scaffolding that may have been made of wood and bound together with rattan, etched in strong three dimensions. In one place the sea has claimed four of the five temples that were carved on the sea shore. Only one remains now and is aptly called shore temple. Not even the last destructive Tsunami destroy this temple. This part of Indian was one of the worst hit by the Tsunami. One see evidence of the destructive force of that Tsunami and one can only admire the resiliance of the locals who seem to draw strenghth from the carvings around them to quietly get on with the art of surviving ang living.
Xavier who is a graduate from the university of Chennai had held down a boring job of a librarian. He seems quite happy in what he is doing now.
In the fairly quite streets by India standards are littered with shops that sell goods directed at tourism. The usual offerin of sarries and other colourfull clothing including trinkets and jewellery, paintings on silk and home spun calico and the ever present insense. I somehow felt I was there before or was it just the Indian in me?
It was hard sayig goodbye to Xavier and Mamallapuram. Rani, my wife , and I will certainly visit Mamallapuram again. Next time we intend seeing India on a motorbike.

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