চা কি খাবোনা আমরা?
- রিকি
মায়াপুর না নবদ্বীপ ?
ভাবলেই মাথা ঢিপ ঢিপ !
টোটো-র হর্ন আর মন্দিরের ভীড় ,
কচুরি পানা ভরা জল জলঙ্গীর ...
তিলক কেটে দেয় হুট হাট হঠাৎ !
সকালে প্রচণ্ড রোদ, ভোগ বড় বিস্বাদ !
চা পান, গান শোনা, লুডু খেলা বারণ !
সরপুরীয়া আছে তাই , ভালো থাকে মন ...
তবে দলে, বলে, গল্পে, বেশ মজা হলো ...
চলো, আবার নতুন কোথাও চলো !
Well if you can read Bengali, then you already have the gist of it from that little scribble above. The major stretch of the road to Mayapur was pretty good with wide, marked out lanes and no potholes. Apparently, it used to be a horrible death trap some ten years back. So, the drive to Mayapur was not bad at all but sadly, it did not lead us on the way to nirvana.
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| Iskon temple view in Mayapur From our Hotel |
Mayapur is a little town in Nadia district in West Bengal, situated at the confluence of Jalangi and Hooghly river. It is widely popular for its Iskon temple and considered as one of the most holy places in India. The nearby city across Jalangi is Nabadwip where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, one of the most revered Hindu saints was born in the 16th century. He popularised chanting of Hare Krishna Hare Rama and as well known, the chant has gone pretty viral worldwide. Why even the English Beatles band had its influence in their songs!
As soon as we stepped into the Iskon temple, we right away dashed towards the lunch hall. Let’s face it - you can’t be spiritual when you are hungry. There was a queue to secure lunch coupons for getting the temple prasad (bhog) and then another follow up queue to get into the lunch hall and then one more queue to get the food. After multiple such queues, when we got to eat the food, we found it was more liquid than solids - the dahl had more water than pulses and the paneer curry had more gravy than paneer. But hungry souls don’t complain much!
The sun was at its shining best. This sucked out a lot of energy from us and we hurried to check in to our hotel. The hotel - Jagannath palace was quite decent. We had lovely adjoining rooms and the much needed AC did work after some fiddling. We had 3 rooms but all of us huddled into a single room and chit chatted the afternoon away.
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| Wide lens view of Mayapur |
A big group of people and lots of stories demand tea. So we picked up a food delivery menu that was left in the room. But upon calling them, they said they didn’t deliver food. You might wonder why you would declare yourself as a delivery service when you didn’t really deliver. That’s your food for thought (that they delivered?). But that’s not the only amusement. Upon asking around a bit more, we realised it was not easy to find tea in Mayapur! Apparently, it is an addiction, hence barred. So is listening to modern music and playing chess! So, the entire addicted lot of us went out in search of more temples and tea!
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| At a Shiva & Jagannatha Temple, Mayapur |
The lanes in Mayapur are very narrow and the most suited mode of travel is toto. We hired two totos and the toto drivers became our local guide. They took us to -
Chand Kazi's Samadhi - resting place of Chand Kazi who being Muslim had initially banned Chaityanya’s chanting but had come to a peaceful resolution once they debated religion between themselves and became a Chaityannya’s follower ever since),
Ballal dhipi - archaeological site where remnants of the kingdom of Ballal Sen from the 12th century is found. It is an open area on a green mound with solid terracotta rocks scattered around. Quite some fresh air in the otherwise concrete city.
Chaitanya math - where we walked around many temples of saints and some souvenir shops
Finally, a big tea stall (wow!),
Another temple where the evening prayer/ aarti was happening with lots of music and chanting
And then, finally dropped us to the main attraction of the town i.e. the Iskon temple.
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| Ballal Dhipi |
The Iskon temple campus had so much concrete and crowd that it was suffocating. A lot of construction work was underway. It looked like the temple was having more extensions even though it already looked pretty huge. There was yet another queue to get inside the temple. The idols were gorgeous and very different from what we are used to seeing - which was nice. But the place boasted about no entry to the new construction without donation which was utterly embarrassing.
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| Ferry crossing to Nabadwip. Check out the two different colours at the river confluence - Jalangi & Hooghly |
Next morning, we crossed a ferry across the river- Jalangi to get to Nabadweep. Mayapur suddenly seemed way nicer! Nabadweep was super chaotic with extremely narrow lanes, constant honking and impatient people rushing on to each other. Another round of toto ride took us to see the sonar gourango (a little idol of Chaitanya made of pure gold), a temple where Chaityannya had left his slippers when he renounced from family life and became a saint and few other places. The place is dotted with tons of temples but we didn’t venture any further. We bagged a pot of kheer doi (famous in Nabadwip) and crossed the ferry back to Mayapur, making our way back to Kolkata.
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| Sonar Gourango |
On the way, we stopped at Krishnanagar. We had to! You cannot cross Krishnanagar and not buy sorpuriya. So we did. A big bag of it - probably the best highlight of the trip barring the rolls of laughter that we shared at every step. As I pen this down, the sweet stock is at its frustrating low. We should have gotten a bigger bag!
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| Krishnanagar Rajbari |
We then had a very late lunch (for which again we were in a queue for 40 minutes!) at Mother’s hut where four robots named Ananya kept carrying food to tables!
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| Ananya, the robot |
Despite the oddity of the place, these couple of days in Mayapur turned out to be quite an unforgettable experience, probably for the oddity itself and also the opportunity that it created for the sarcastic creativity of the big, crazy family I have! Also, for the sorpuriya! Blessed.
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| Now, time for some Tea! |
