Sahapedia is an online resource on arts, culture and
heritage. It also conducts programmes and events. It recently organised the
second edition of the month-long India Heritage Walk, with walking tours in over
35 Indian cities.
I had the pleasure of participating in one of these walks conducted by Sujata Balakrishnan a
few weeks ago, and here is a description of my experience along with some
intriguing facts I learnt from the walk.
Image source: https://thinkbangalore.blogspot.com/2015/05/kadu-mallikarjunaswamy-temple.html#.XIFJISgzbtQ
The walk I went for was around Malleshwaram, a well-known locality
of Bangalore. The walk was named “Down Memory Lane” and it began early in the
morning on Sunday, 24th February. You probably think I’m a loser to
wake up early on a Sunday to do something educational, but this wasn’t just a
tedious tour from which you come back full of unimportant, monotonous facts. In
fact, some of the things I learnt would really impress and excite young
readers. For example, did you know that the fictional town of ‘Malgudi’ written
about by R K Narayan, was named after Malleshwaram and Basavangudi combined (‘Mal’
from Malleshwaram and ‘gudi’ from Basavangudi)? I bet not!
Malleshwaram was created in the early 19th
century for a unique reason.
In 1898, a deadly plague affected Bangalore’s city-centre,
spreading rapidly because of the town’s unsanitary conditions. The British (who
were ruling India at the time) began to worry about the plague spreading to
their cantonments. Hence, they built the new hygienic suburbs of Malleshwaram
and Basavangudi.
By the way, the word ‘Malleshwaram’ comes from the Kannada
word ‘male’ meaning hill and ‘eshwara’ for the Shiva temple there.
After we learnt about the fascinating history of
Malleshwaram, we were taken to a temple called Sri Dakshinamukha Nandi Tirtha Kalyani
Kshetra. This temple too has an awe-inspiring story behind it.
When the temple was first discovered, it didn’t have much
except a Nandi statue in it. One special thing about the statue was that there
was a continuous flow of water that dripped down from its mouth and onto the ground.
Anyway, the residents of Malleshwaram assumed it was just a Nandi temple, and
contained no other deity.
However, in 1997, there was attempt to grab the temple area
and use it for some development. The residents were very indignant and
protested passionately. They dug the area around the temple claiming that this
was temple area and should be protected. Everyone was shocked to find that
below the existing Nandi statue was a large Shiva lingam and an entire temple
complex that had been lost all these years! The water from Nandi’s mouth was
actually falling onto the lingam and constantly bathing it!
The community was allowed to keep the temple that way, but
to this day, nobody knows the source of the water that flows from Nandi’s
mouth.
Next, we visited a temple that had a rock with Shivaji’s
inscriptions on it. The rock was inside a temple whose maintenance he funded. It
has an inscription on it in Old Kannada saying “Anyone who damages or defaces
this temple is akin to a Muslim eating pork in Mecca or a Hindu slaughtering a
cow in Varanasi.” The powerful words ensured that nobody damaged the temple in
any way.
The last temple we entered – Kadu Mallikarjunaswamy Temple –
has another myth behind it. It goes as follows.
One day, a betel leaf merchant, tired out from a day’s work,
decided to rest under a tree in a forest (kadu). He felt hungry, and lit a fire
to cook some food. As the fire began to kindle, he heard an angry voice shout
at him to stop. It told him that he was about to commit sacrilege. He looked
down, surprised, and saw that what he thought was a stone was actually a Shiva
lingam rising out of rock (swayambhu).
He decided to build a temple around it, and to this day, the
temple is still standing with the swayambhu lingam, surrounded by tall, green
trees. It is calm and peaceful, with the only sounds around being the crunching
of twigs and the rustling of leaves.
I certainly learnt a lot of interesting things about Malleshwaram
that day. At the end of the walk, we had a hearty breakfast at New Krishna
Bhavan. I thoroughly enjoyed the walk and am looking forward to more such walks
organised by Sahapedia.
