Oceans of the eyes … the oceans of the lips .. they take me down with them, drowned … all the happiness of the world with you and yours, may you ever remain with them … when your eye lashes meet mine, your heart touches with mine, then have we reached the  … satisfaction of togetherness .. my life my happiness all, in your name .. in your name, thus must it be and is .. may you not forget, nor I that when hearts meet do we reach destinations .. my longing turmoil, your laughter .. my sleep your dreams .. oceans of the eyes drown me now within you .. the still silence of two but one, look to nowhere … that quiet shift of my fingers into yours softly unannounced .. a tightening of palms and the wrench somewhere within inexplainable … sounds that link each breath that you do take and I .. no desire as close, no form in form … what and where is this .. is this it that is ..

Apologies and more .. just got poetically taken up with some thoughts that crossed this ever troubled mind of ours when solitude overwhelms us, as must it do to many who read with me. We hear we witness we listen and we build inside us a wave of energy that envelopes us in the rushed flash of its emotion. Long do we all, to remain with it for ever, but it disappoints us, much like that troubled lover, doubtful and without trust. Who leads us there but loses itself in the midst of our following … we search and hope and labor long to discover it. It eludes us now and shall perhaps for eternity. Such affection rarely returns with strength. It has been marauded and cut away among the forest of its own vegetation .. the stew that burns is indeed its own, and burn it shall in it as well .. as well as it can ..

Today the Ambaji temple, built some centuries away, with many myths and theological and religious sentiment. Shiv the destroyer, among the three – Brahma the creator, Vishnu the protector and Shiv the destroyer – the destroyer because the wrong needed to be destroyed for the good to survive, or for fresh thought and deed to develop, had done the ‘tandav’ dance, a dance of the destroyer, angry and sharp in content, with the body they say, of either his wife after her death, on his head. It was vigorous and strongly emotional. To stop Shiv from this almost uncontrollable form Brahma intervened by cutting the body into many parts. They fell at 51 places all over the country and wherever it fell there has it been constructed a ‘peeth’ a place of worship. The heart they say fell at this location where the temple is now, it was called the ‘Shakti Peeth’ and Amba Ma the goddess was established here and the rituals for her prayers initiated. She is symbolized as having her carrier as the Lion, and so the white marble statue that you see in the picture is of that within the main prayer hall.

I visited this Temple in 1998 during the shooting for the film ‘Sooryavansham’. But then it was just a very remote small unkept place which looked something like this -

But within the last 7-8 years it has been worked on and with the additions around it has the look as you see in the photograph above. It has the aesthetics of some of the finest temple architecture in marble, excavated from the Aravali range of mountains that surround the region. Apparently the Aravali range is considered in some historical circles to be even older than the Himalayas. They are not as vast as high and as mighty as the largest mountain range in the world, but they were there before the Himalayas. Of course this emanates from that grand theory that the entire Indian subcontinent was once millions of years ago a part of Eastern Africa, joined at the region where Egypt and the Somalia horn exist now. It broke away, this large land mass and drifted across the Arabian Sea, collided with the Asian land mass and became what we now call India. The Himalayas, was of course, a result of this massive impact that took place. The breaking away theory and the impact theory as far as the Himalayas are concerned is supported by the fact that the Aravali were never the result of any impact of land mass. They are vertical in direction, the Himalaya horizontal. Had there been an impact theory for the Aravali too, they would not have been vertical. Had the Aravali range been horizontal too, there would have been a major change in the weather system of the country. The Monsoons, the only source of rain and water for the country would then, after crossing the western coast, have met the Aravali Range, deposited the moisture there and not be able to move up to the Himalayas and provide rain for the northern regions of the country. But these are topics which could better be explained by scientists ; those that study the history of our geographical contours. I do not wish to state that all that I have heard and written is indeed born and backed by fact, it is not. But as one drives for long hours each day and enquires for the details of many of the sites that surround the countryside, one hears and picks up ad libbed conversations to form opinion.

Faith and belief have been so integral to the existence of the human. I write human, because the generalized term ‘mankind’ expressed as a reference to the human, has been objected to often by … the female gender. Why mankind, why not woman kind .. ?? They have lamented and argued .. and rightly so. It has therefore made me more cautious whenever there is need to put in words the word that now requires attention and respect .. womankind !!

So yes .. faith and belief, such strong portents for human existence. And how marvelously well the human has designed accepted and follows the faith that is given to him or her at birth. Never to question never to disbelieve, or disrespect. That is the latent strength of belief and its spread ..

Amitabh Bachchan