A THOUSAND YEAR OLD GANESH -- FOUND!!

HOW I FOUND A 1000 YEAR OLD IDOL

Ganesh Chaturthi took me back to my time at Talbehat. 

Field firing used to take place at Babina Ranges (how the armour guys loved to call it it the Biggest Armoured Base In Asia!). Deployment areas being limited, we had a choice  to do our drills, dummy occupations, deployments and dry runs along two axis. 

               Road Babina-Talbehat-Lalitpur; with Lalitpur having a huge abandoned  WW2 airfield, used in wartime as a refueling stop for aircraft moving Eastwards to the Burma front. I used to imagine the roar of Lancasters, Dakota C47's, B17's and of the times when the aerodrome was bustling with allied airmen and troops. Now just a broken down wooden ATC and a long runway, in a surprisingly good condition and cattle grazing . Spread around Lalitpur were also the many  granite quarries and wide open spaces for artillery drills.

              The other axis was along the highway, road Babina - Jhansi - Khajuraho. Babina is just about 230 km from Khajuraho. The area along the road was sparsely populated and had many ruins and decrepit villages.

             So one hot summer afternoon, as I stood beside my jeep at a vantage point, observing the gun group enter the selected 'gun area', I noticed I was actually on a small mound of rubble with bushes all around. As I looked around idly, I could make out a small cave like structure with stones and some mud baked bricks strewn around.

Interesting.

              As I walked to the centre of the bushy area, my driver warned me-- 'sabh, yahan par saamp  honge'.  We were aware that this entire area is infested with Vipers. Anyway, my curiosity got the better of me and I continued exploring.

            GREAT GUNS -- it was an ancient temple which had collapsed and was not visible. It had been lying undisturbed for a couple of centuries - waiting for a present day Livingstone! Just a pile of gravel and stones. It was then that I spotted the statue, half buried. I removed the dried grass, the muck, the mud and centuries old detritus and found myself staring at a sculpted statue of the same type and period as of the Khajuraho Temples near by. 

This one hewn from Sandstone, by some master  craftsman, who had done his time and gone to his heavenly abode, hundreds of years back.

           The Khajuraho temples were built between 950 and 1050 by the Chandela dynasty. Historical records note that the Khajuraho temple site had 85 temples by the 12th century, spread over 20 square kilometers. Of these, only about 25 temples have survived, spread over six square kilometers. But all around the area are many more less famous small temples. Many in ruins. I had stumbled on one of them. 

              The ''Ganesha" I held in my hand was between 900 to a 1000 years old!

The  statue is now my possession, ofcourse, a misdemeanor as far as the ASI is concerned. But it is in good hands.

          If you won't tell, I will also not tell!!