Kanheri

There was age

Written all over the basalt hill,

Who would have known millennia ran

Through the summer songs -

The cicada’s trill

 

Caves of lore

From the Silk Route days

Nestled here, in this corner where

The bustling city doesn’t know

The backyard where it plays

 

The giant Buddha

Takes my breath away –

And the monastic cells, the chaitya halls

Frozen in stone from long ago -

Upon the sangha’s way

 

I think I hear

Where streams of time converge,

The tapping sounds, the chiselling hands

Nirvana for the saffron souls

Where all our sins can purge

 

Then bit by bit,

The pliant plateau fills with caves,

An ancient centre sprawls with lives

A little Ellora wakes anew

Upon the Arabian waves

And I the artist,

I have come here too

Yes, I too have filled these rocks with life

A Yaksha here, a Buddha there

I come full circle in my view

 

Kanheri thrives

Upon the Salsette of the seas,

And I – have I done it all? Can I now escape?

But the Buddha frowns, for there is more

Before this cycle comes to cease

 

Peaceful eyes and curly hair

The head monk comes to me

‘Have you come back then? Do you want some more?

There’s peace upon these lonely hills

Where would you rather be?’

 

In a second’s split,

A giant city grows everywhere I stand

And smoky noises break my shard of peace

Perhaps all of this a broken dream

That I cannot understand

 

‘Do you want some more?’

The fruit seller asks in front of me

I shake my head, despite the familiar face,

And stare again at the Buddha eyes

There was more now I could see

 

The artist or the audience,

Why then the madness of these roles?

Kanheri’s past is quiet today, as if asking us to seek

Those tapping sounds, those chiselling hands

Nirvana for the saffron souls… 

Anyone who has had the privilege of visiting the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai – the world’s largest urban National Park - will have surely visited the Kanheri Caves. Today, the park, the hills and the surrounding jungles have been engulfed by the megapolis that is Mumbai, but centuries back, these black basalt hills called Krishnagiri or Kanhagiri – or Kanheri (implying black hills) would have been a silent refuge in a corner of the Deccan thriving from trade of the Silk route. The nearby Sopara port would have traded with Egypt and Mesopotamia while Kanheri – an important Buddhist centre – would have thrived in the island of Salsette (later joined by the British with other nearby islands to form Mumbai)

The first time I saw the caves, I was mesmerised by their sheer grandness and their gigantic statutes. The enigma of the hills, and the antiquity of this lost epicentre of Buddhism was a wonder to behold – over time, as I travelled more around the city, more and more of these primeval jewels emerged from within the shiny veneer of the ever growing city – Elephanta, Mahakali, Magathane; then there were more hidden in the Sahyadris – the Bedsa, Karla, Bhaja caves, as if all spreading in concentric circles from ancient Mauryan and Kushan times, and later bolstered by the largesse of the Satavahans, the patrons behind the ultimate culmination of Buddhist art –Ellora and Ajanta. 

Once upon a time, even the famous Chinese traveller Hieun Tsang came to these caves. Today, joggers, travellers, lovers and hikers come to the magic that was once Kanheri. In the spirit of life that connects all of us in this material world, perhaps we are then all travellers, revisiting, reconvening and retracing where we once were, centuries past…