Overview of the journey

Our journey for the course ‘Temple Town Tales’ started the day we were given our Interim course subject and destination. Though the actual Interim started almost a month after that, mentally I was in the process already.

The first week of the Interim was the research week. We did several activities. First we were asked to find out about our own family history. This activity helped us in deciding the approach towards the history. We also visited two temples, and did a small research about it. We talked to the priests in the temple, the devotees who were there and also to the people who lived around the temple. This activity was helpful to prepare our mind-set and to set methodology before going to Hampi for research. We thought about the questions to be asked to the people, segment wise and had pilot experience of the interactions.

We had a small session about photography by Eduardo. He was our facilitator for the Interim course, and a skilled photographer from Boston. What I took from his lectures was, How to find the ‘story’ in frames. He taught us the importance of sequence in photography.

For the first two days we were guided by our facilitators, Narendra, Sonal and Eddy. They took us to the important places in and around Hampi. On the first day, we visited the Virupaksha Temple (the main and only functional temple in Hampi), the Hemakuta Hills, Monolithic Bull, Vithala Temple and the Monolithic Ganesha.

Hemakuta Hills

On the second day, we were taken to Anegundi, a nearby village, which is becoming a tourist attraction now a days. Recently developed by Shama Pawar, the village is famous for Banana Fibre.

From the third day onwards we worked on our own. Every day we used to have a discussion session in the evening. From the experience of the first two days, I had got some idea of what the course was going to be. So on the second day, after discussing with our facilitators, we decided our rough area for research. I decided to work in Hampi. And focus on stories related to Hampi. And from there our actual journey began.

I decided to visit all the remaining places in Hampi, and amongst them I found the Harihara palace and the Hajararama temple most fascinating. I found out that these places have a lot of stories, some related to the history, some to religion and some to politics. I decided to focus on these two places. I visited these places again and again for 8 days, till I became familiar to it. I sat there for hours, observed every carving on the wall, and gathered information from various sources.

I talked with a few guides, an official from the Department of Archaeology and the maintenance staff and gathered a lot of information. From this process, I overcame the fear of talking with strangers. I talked with every person I found interesting.

I learnt the importance of stories. A story doesn’t just talk about history or mythology, but it reveals the inter-relation between history, culture, language, beliefs, religion, people, social life…… about everything.

What I found was the ‘approach’ matters. If you are open, the carvings tell you about everything, and if you visit it with only a specific perception, you may get a lot related to your focus, but you may miss a lot, the comprehension.

I chose this concept as my project theme. After coming back from Hampi, I made a small documentary on Hampi for my project. There I talked about the stories about Harihara Palace and the Hajararama Temple.

This course taught me how to look at things. I had been to Hampi Before. I had seen all these places. But this time I observed it, and I could understand it. And this is the biggest takeaway from this course.