Setting Foot into the Graveyard

The excitement at the prospect of a trip unaccompanied by any parental authority, the exhaustion of the travel from the previous night, and the sheer delight and wonder of being in a brand new land sprawled with massive boulders and serpentine streams had not even left me as we hopped into the boat that would ferry us from the real world into this mysterious land that to me seemed utterly stagnated in time. From afar, and even after stepping into it, it seemed to me like a magical bubble where fantastic beings once dwelled.

As my imagination soared, I conjured up stories about the ancient souls that once might've inhabited the magnificent structures and I felt an awe for them, and a slight inferiority I couldn't possibly explain.

When we first go to a new place, we tend to romanticize it. We set foot into Hampi with what can be called a 'touristy' approach.

 I found myself looking at the massive structures, the intricately carved pillars- these evidences of a once-magnificent civilization- with an exceedingly marveling eye.

 My imagination soared- I thought of the ancient souls that inhabited those pillared hallways and magnificent temples and I was afraid to say a word. I almost felt as if saying something would destroy the sanctity of the place, would bring those mysterious souls back to life and at my throats, to mock me and my so obvious inferiority of being ‘modern’, of being a mere resident of the  21^st century. 

As we skipped from one site of ruins to another- Virupaksha Temple, the Monolithic Bull and Narsimha Temple, this feeling of wonder and mystification persisted.

I took slight notice of the people inhabiting this Temple Town. I barely registered the desperation of the shopkeepers or the sheer volume of the thronging tourists, - I suppose, because I was one of them. I was too preoccupied with my fantasies of the histories to notice the present.

Hampi felt like this mysterious, magically intact graveyard.

 And I was irrationally delighted.