Saturday 22nd November 2008

Mamallapuram, long before it was a town drowned by the sea, was a town hewn out of rock. Famous for its ancient religious monuments and cave temples, almost every corner heralds a new shrine: elephants, reclining Vishnus, temples to the elephant god Ganesh; even a large Indiana Jones-style boulder perched precariously on top of a craggy mount and known as ‘Krishna’s Butter Ball.’

We get up early, and rent a couple of rusty chopper bikes, negotiating morning rickshaw traffic and arriving at the famous Shore Temple just in time for the day’s drizzle to begin. Immediately we park our cycles, there is a man with an ‘official tour guide’ badge waiting for us to pay him a hundred rupees to talk us around the shrine. Trying to explain (in all honesty) that we just wanted to look and we weren’t really interested in the history (such philistines!) he tries to encourage us to buy a set of postcards from a pushy dwarf, before giving up altogether. When we arrive, the shrine is magnificent: standing atop the cliff since 700 AD, but, we are warned, being slowly eroded by the sea air.

This morning, it is also being gently eroded by an old woman in a headscarf, who is bending over among the ruins, sloshing water over them from a bucket. Chipmunks dance around her. On the other side of the temple, a family of Italian tourists have clambered upon one of the more intricate carvings, smiling as one of the guides takes their picture. The youngest daughter jumps off and stamps up and down some of the hewn steps.

A few metres away from this spot, a sign proudly pronounces Shore Temple a National Heritage Site.

Outside the next temple, people weaving in and out selling pendants and bracelets are more than happy to kick us off our bikes. As coachloads of tourists snap away the the rock, climbing in and out of the temples, an Indian man holding a small broom climbs up to the head of an elephant. He proceeds to sweep vigorously, as below him, a team of 'litter-pickers' kick pebbles off the top of a statue. A guard walks down the steps, hooking a bottle into the bushes with his left foot. A handful of monkeys sit atop a temple roof, and swing off the columns. It is World Heritage Week, and a banner being tied to nails on the rock face reminds Mamallapuram of this fact. The town is choosing to celebrate with it’s own preservation initiatives.

There are signs all over the town pronouncing littering a sin, and rubbish bins are scattered about the place, labelled with instructions to keep Mamallapuram tidy. There must be some logic behind the fact that they are all blue and shaped like penguins.

Meanwhile, the monkeys watch tourists stepping in and out. A fenced off area is broken through, and since the only guards are the government tourist touts bartering for guided tours and pointing backpackers in the direction of the best knick-knack shops, kids are hanging out beyond the mangled chicken wire, listening to mp3s on their mobile phones.

It’s an old adage often asked in the West: ‘Why spend so much money on heritage when there are people starving in the world?’ But when a centuries-old monument crumbles before your eyes, there is some instinct within that compels you to jump and save it. No one wants to be reminded that any mark we may leave on the world may one day also crumble and be swept over by women with straw brooms.

Here in Mamallapuram, workshops line the sites of almost every shrine, men outside, chiselling away at lumps of basalt with sharp tools and plenty of elbow grease, throwing dust into their eyes as, at the end of their fingers, effigies of Ganesh, or the laughing Buddha, or a sitting monkey, appear. As each new tourist arrives, by foot or by car or by cycle, they stop and call out, inviting them to come over and bring home a carving, even before they have set eyes on the original works they came here for. And they do a roaring trade. If the temples and shrines were to crumble away, it is still possible to imagine these men here, the clink of metal on stone ricocheting from hill to hill, and across the empty bay.