Omiya was standing at the steps of the Nine Planets Temple, eager to get inside and look once again at the stone idols of the planets. Ten years ago, she was here for the first time, and now again, after all these years. Today she was doing what she had been wanting to for years, and even though it meant hurting a lot of people, she was there, her heart thumping, sweat drops on her forehead on a morning in March, when summer was weeks away.
Before she came here, she had gone to the Kamakhya Temple, visited by thousands from all over India. Outside the gate of their house, she luckily spotted an autorickshaw which she stopped and got in, and was on her way on the bumpy road, from Beltola via Fancy Bazar and then up and up the Nilachal Hills, and had reached before seven.
The sun was mild and birds were chirpily food hunting in the trees. She handed her sandals for safekeeping at one of the shops and took her token, then bought the offerings and the flowers, thinking of the events of the night before. Her life had changed overnight, literally. Did she even dream of it? No.
Then she saw the crowd, with the line winding all around the temple and beyond, exactly what she wanted to avoid and the reason she came so early. Now her enthusiasm fizzled out. To wait that long to reach the inner temple was not what she wanted.
So she retraced her steps and took another autorickshaw, to the Nine Planets Temple. By then, the office traffic had started. To meander through that cluster of cars and buses, with the motorcycles getting into the crevices they could find, was more than a nightmare. But the auto driver was expert, and they reached in less than an hour. They got slowed when they were coming up the hill, with the narrow steep road and the increasing elevation was too much for his engine, which sputtered and protested a few times, stopping and starting.
This place was completely the opposite of the situation in Kamakhya. There was hardly anyone. A middle-aged couple was advancing towards the man. The man was lagging behind the woman, who was probably his wife, to shoo away a monkey following him. The monkey’s eyes were on the bananas he had brought, to offer inside, and if he was not careful, would snatch it away. There were banners outside, asking to be careful about monkeys.
The air around the temple, situated at the top of the Nabagraha Hill, was cool and still. Omiya breathed the pure oxygen, something rare in the residential parts of Guwahati. The height and the lack of smoothly paved roads had dissuaded people to come and overpopulate the hill.
The few homes on the hillside had been built with hard work, as transferring bricks and iron to those parts was definitely not easy. A man was sawing wood outside a thatched hut, next to a half built foundation in a fenced lot. Workers were pouring in there, as they hung their bags and changed their clothes to start the construction.
(To be continued…)
