Flex Mentallo

I have taken refuge at your feet, my beloved. When I do not see you, my mind has no rest. you are to me as a parent to a helpless child. You are the goddess herself, the garland about my neck, my very universe. All is darkness without you; you are the meaning of my prayers. I cannot forget your grace and your charm, and yet there is no lust in my heart. Chandidas (a Bengali poet of the 14th century)

Kajuraho

The experience has remained engraved in my memory for over 30 years.

In 1982 I found the warmth of lives wrought in stone and its textures quite overwhelming.

Eros personified.

Yet so joyously tender they are the very antithesis of pornography.

They are unashamedly erotic.

The weathering of the sandstone seems to intensify their humanity, founded as they are in a view of lives fleeting mortality.

Even though many have weathered badly in the salt laden coastal air, the sheer humanity of the sculptor's vision enables us to see the deep warmth, compassion and humanity with which they are suffused.

And scenes from courtly life

Intricate botanical scenes

Lovers

Dancers

Musicians

Magical damsels known as apsaras

Warriors

Elephants

Its figures are of gods

It is a chronicle in sandstone of a long lost earthly paradise.

The chief grandeur of the Konarak temple that distinguishes it from other temples is the quality and profusion of sculptural work.

The temple would have resembled this one in the Orissa State Capital of Buvaneshwar.

What is left is merely the entrance hall - yet the grandeur of its conception hints at what has been lost.

Owing to the weak foundations, the main vimana collapsed in the 19th century.

Only six of the seven horses still stand today.

The Sun Temple, also known as "The Black Pagoda” was built in the 13th century and designed as a gigantic chariot of the Sun God, Surya, with twelve pairs of ornamented wheels pulled by seven horses. Some of the wheels are 3 meters wide.