Hampi: The old and the new.

Hampi is a place of old ghosts and young blood. Lithe, creamy Europeans wearing billowing cotton pants in butterfly colours walk side by side with the swaggering nut-brown local guides in nylon football jerseys—each trying to be what he imagines the other is. The land is surreal—towering boulders are strewn about in heedless abandon, flecks of quartz shimmering in the afternoon glare. Soda vendors lean casually against the ruins.
My taciturn boatman doubles up as my guide as we walk up to the Singing Temple. A delicate cage of thin, fluted pillars hold the mythic beasts carved into the stone. In the old days, the temple would have skeins of fine cotton wound around its pillars. The priests would thrum beams of sandalwood rhythmically against them, building up a resounding harmony. No more, though. Age has weakened their bones, and a final song could mean collapse.
He catches me peering into a hall he’s overlooked. Avoiding my eyes, he stammers, “Only for, ah, married lady, see?” Entwined, voluptuous stone bodies embellish the dim walls, matter-of-factly announcing that the ancients didn’t care much for such bourgeois prudery.
Trudging along the path back, I come across a gigantic banyan tree housing thousands of faded cloth bundles filled with pebbles. Cairns litter the base. I’m abruptly joined by a herd of pungent goats and a leathery, gaunt shepherdess, her sparse grey hair tied up in a rough cotton turban.
I twist my hand in the air, palm open enquiringly. “What is it? Kya hai?”
She softens, cradling her arms and reaching to the sky in prayer. This tree is the receptacle of bridal hope. A small and private god beneath a cloudy blue sky, that the locals keep for themselves as the firangs lay claim to their old ones. She tears a scrap off her once-bright sari, and offering it, waits for me to tie my fertility to a tree. I oblige; it is a blessing. She touches my head lightly and turns away, scolding her unruly goats.