Mahabalipuram Rocks

You know how you can just get sucked into a time vortex as you sit on a beach and listen to the waves? Well, that's pretty much what happened to me here in Mahabalipuram on the South-Eastern coast of India in Tamil Nadu.

That and the company of a good friend, who I'm visiting here. And absolutely perfect weather. And a relatively offline existance with internet connections, which sort of work one moment and not at all the next.

But Mahabalipuram is an excellent place to spend some time. It's very laid back and the people are ever so friendly, and the sea is my love is the sea - with the incessant roll of big ocean waves that sound so different from the waves of our domestic Baltic Sea and a warm and brisk wind, which feels divine and makes one's skin and clothes sticky with airborn salt.

Also, Mahabalipuram is a treasure chest of ancient stonework and temples! At a time when my Finnish ancestors were pretty much busy scratching images of match stick men on to cliff faces (some 2000 or 1500 years ago), here the carvings are somewhat more intricate - and three dimensional.

And they definitely depict more elephants!

Sometimes the temples and statues are hewn directly from coastal cliffs - such as in the image below, the monolithic temples and elephant at Five Rathas, an early Pallava dynasty temple are from around AD 630.

One is slightly humbled by the beauty and artistry of these ancient monuments. At the same time, the roads here are chock-a-block with nearly identical cow, elephant and god statues. The style and form doesn't seem to have altered very much in a couple of thousand years. Maybe the benefit of not having such a strong crafts culture is, that one is more free to seek new forms of expression. There is no "ancient Finnish" sculpture tradition to dictate what should or should not be done.

But then again, if there were such a tradition and it was as impressive as here, I wouldn't mind at all.