So, I guess that’s what I did today, and it worked out pretty well.
I had “planned” a simple little day around the house and neighborhood: I’d do some reading, take a bike ride, maybe have lunch somewhere, the usual. But my landlady came to my door about 11:00 and asked if I’d be interested in going to see a temple about an hour away and since I’d been told by a former resident of my apartment that if such an opportunity ever presented itself, I should jump at it, I did.
An hour later, I was in a car with her, her driver, and my downstairs neighbor, bumping over village roads on the way to a place called Somanthapura, a temple made from carved limestone constructed in the 13th century. Of course it was amazing, but even more unexpected and ultimately satisfying was a side trip we took to an active temple about a half mile down the road, where we were welcomed by the residents and fed a lunch off plates made of leaves.
The place was charmingly home-grown; it reminded me of something you’d run across in the deep South of America, just some person’s, or group of persons’ own personal homage to the supernatural, like the “outsider art” of Howard Finster or something. Apparently, the spiritual leader of the place used to sleep on a bed of nails and sit in a chair of spikes, too.
I liked how there was a connection across almost 800 years of history between the two temples, and I wondered if we had wandered into Somanthapura on a Sunday afternoon in 1256 or whatever, if we’d also been served a meal.
That would have been unexpected, I’m sure.
Cool!
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