Book: HAMPI: THE RITUALS OF TIME
Images by Saibal Das
Introduction and text by Sugata Srinivasaraju
Published by: Bart
Price: Rs 2,000
When myths and history converge, fault lines appear if one tries to find similarities between the two. That is the case with Hampi, believed to be Kishkindha of the Ramayana fame. But as Saibal Das’s phenomenal photographs of Hampi reveal, poetic truths evaporate in the face of cold facts.
In Kishkindha Kand, the fourth chapter of Valmiki Ramayana, the poet, Valmiki, describes the eponymous kingdom of vanaras or simians where a heart-broken Rama and Lakshmana proceeded to after Ravana had abducted Sita. Rama describes the paradisiacal beauty of the land and feels the absence of Sita even more keenly.
Rama sat on the banks of the lake, Pampa, with an abundance of fish and its gem-like clear waters embellished with lotus blooms. The flowering forest of trees was showering flowers just as the rainclouds shed water. The various trees of the garden swayed by the winds covered the beautiful, rocky grounds with flowers. The choral music of the wind emanating noisily from mountain caves together with the call of the intoxicated koels appeared to make the trees dance. While Rama pined for Sita and grieved the waste of nature’s beauty in her absence, Lakshmana exhorted this paragon of masculinity to steel his mind to rescue his spouse from Ravana no matter how perilous the place where he had hidden Sita. Rama comes to his senses and soon thereafter the vanaras made their appearance.
Saibal Das’s atmospheric black-and-white photographs are revelatory. They show that there is not much similarity between a forested Kishkindha of the Ramayana and the bleak realities of Hampi, a parched wilderness of countless granite boulders exposed to the elements that threaten to swallow the remnants of Vijayanagara or the Victory City that was once located here. Instead of hailing the lost splendours of India’s wealthiest and most powerful kingdom founded in 1336 that was pillaged and destroyed by the combined forces of the Deccan sultans in 1565, Das’s far-reaching vision reveals a primeval landscape that had existed long before the rise of Sangama and his brothers, who established Vijayanagara. This land has survived the vicissitudes and the turbulence of Deccan politics and the slow, cruel hands of time.
Both the ruins of Vijayanagara and the rocky terrain of Hampi seem to have been wrought by the prodigious forces of nature that can cleave the colossal boulders. The bouldered landscape and decaying architecture of the imperial city belong to each other. The opening image of the giant upturned monolith with a crack running down its length hints at the birth story of the stony and arid topography. Many of these unembellished images, with the drama of the sun and the billowing clouds as their overarching frame, are fraught with the symbolism of man’s eternal strive
to overpower nature. Defeat is inevitable but humans never capitulate easily.
Yet, in a way, Das’s images succeed in their endeavour to arrest the triumphal march of time. His mesmerising photography makes that possible.
The craggy hills and open plains of Hampi with their austere grandeur seem to have been the playground of gods older than Virupaksha or Shiva and Vitthala who were worshipped in their temples. This is the only mighty Hindu imperial city where the “whole range of a royal city life” has survived, George Michell, a world authority on South Asian architecture, has said. Viewed through Das’s lenses, the multi-storeyed gopuras and mandapas that became the hallmarks of the mature and the sophisticated Vijaynagara style seem to have emerged from the rugged surroundings. This is not surprising for the great temples and the palaces of Vijayanagara and urban centres, where ordinary people lived, were all hewn out of the locally available granite. Every inch of their surface overlaid with intricate carvings, they rise sheer and proud above this wasteland of boulders, some balanced precariously against the skyline.
Das’s photographs bring out an amazing variety of gritty and gravelly textures existing on the stony walls of the archaeological remains, some inscribed with ancient drawings or embellished with both hieratic and demotic images. The gouged-out boulders and the hewn-out rocky surfaces testify to the whimsicality and the arbitrariness of natural forces. The occasional presence of human beings and animals doesn’t soften the aloofness of this kingdom of stone, for even the gnarled trunk of the occasional tree has the temper of stone. The starkness of each frame gives the photographs the dignity and the serenity of an ascetic who has renounced all worldly attachments.
Saibal Das, who has decades of experience as a photojournalist behind him, had photographed Hampi continually for over four years from 2008-2009, using film, more often than not imported from abroad. He went to great lengths to master the technique of producing platinum-palladium print for the images. The well-thought-out design by Alimpan Ghosh has enhanced the austere beauty of this book nurtured with much care.