Sandstone drawn into honeycomb patterns that rise into the skies. Elephants that race along, interspersed with giant horses. Musicians with flutes and drums. Gods and goddesses. Consorts and demons. Swans and monkeys. And everywhere, like a thread that links the sandstone to the extent of the sculptor’s imagination, are the voluptuous women whose very stance is a self-conscious regard of themselves and their bodies.

This then is Khajuraho. World Heritage Site and tourist kumbh. Home to an extraordinary burst of temples with some of the finest architecture conceived by the human mind and carvings wrought by the mortal hand. And a modern day lesson in the economics of tourism and what it can do to corrupt.

My friends, an English couple and I, arrived in Jhansi after an insipid train ride of 35 hours. Much as I love trains, this one left me feeling as if I was going nowhere. The landscape barely changed and day and night were registered only by the increase and decrease of the air conditioning. In Jhansi then I felt the first frisson of delight. The cold. Biting cold that left our fingers numb and turned our ear tips into ice cubes. Three hours later we were in Khajuraho.

As we drove in, the driver said, “This is the international airport. It will be ready soon!” In a little village of about 9000 people, where 70 per cent live by agriculture and the balance 30 per cent eke a livelihood out of tourism, an international airport promises to be figurative manna, food descending from the heavens in the garb of seeing eyes and curious minds.

The next few days, we heard this repeated again and again, except that after the first time, I felt a shudder pass through me, each time. The consequences are already everywhere – from Hungarian goulash in a restaurant menu to the phoren ‘twang’ in the English spoken by guides, vendors and cycle rickshaw drivers. From signboards advertising genuine Italian food to the chorus children break into: “Hello-pen-chocolate-shampoo-saboon-ten rupees please,” to kitsch-laden shops. From the murmured tip-off at the temple site by the security guards to preying guides: “there’s one for you,” to that blatant cunningness that is derived from the thought that here are a few gullible bakras that we should lead to the slaughter.

Disillusionment is quick and consistent. I cringed each time my friends were hounded and felt the need to apologise. Until we entered the Western Group of temples (Indians pay rupees 10; foreigners, rupees 250).
The grounds are lush and speckled with copses of trees under which are benches and a stray love seat or two. Sprinklers keep the green intact and provide an almost perfect backdrop for these monumental ruins. On a guided tour of the temples, the guides begin with the Lakshmana Temple so named for the king who had it built rather than the deity within who is Mahavishnu. This is the most majestic of the temples and it is here, like an addendum, that I saw a little temple for Varaha, the third avatar of Vishnu. The Varaha is one of the lesser known avatars and I have never seen a temple for this incarnation before.

The wild boar is covered with figurines instead of bristles. Even the earlobes, the hooves and the snout are carved. These help define and delineate. For the first time, Khajuraho with all its splendour spoke to me....
The patter of the guides varies. In Hindi, the tone is respectful and even laden with awe. Erotic elements are dealt with swiftly and in a matter of fact voice that drops to a hush. My friends have to bear the brunt of the English guide’s lewd circumlocutions. There are smirks and cocked eyebrows and several rhetorical questions with spirited lashings of formulaic expressions: tantra, sixty-nine, satisfaction....

In a love seat, sit two old Marathi women. Haripaat drips from their mouths. The heaving and thrust of life contained, they are content to sit under the triad shade of the trees while sons and daughters-in-law seek the temples and the carvings. “Don’t you want to see the temples?” I ask one of them. One by one, they tell me of their knees, swollen and aching. In Prayag, where their journey will cease, they will bathe their knees and weary souls, they add. Khajuraho is a mere detour.
A group of women and children and their menfolk walk by. They are migrant workers from Chattarpur seeking work. This is their day off and they have chosen to come to the temples. The erotica escapes them as do most of the carvings. They tell me of their lives. Between here and their next destination, they seek respite under the trees and aim their eyes to the skies where a plane wings its way in. A man asks me about planes, “Tell me, how does it feel to be so high up in the sky?”

In Khajuraho, I had thought I would be faced with no surprises. But, as I search for an answer, a metaphor appvropriate for the man to relate to, I feel my mind escaping the confines of the everyday. ‘What next?’ erases itself and it is ‘How Now!’ that reigns….Freeze the moment with no questions asked.