Culture On The Coast

A SOLITARY STROLL ON ODISHA’S SHORES REVEALS A FEW GEMS, LITERAL AND OTHERWISE. 

- Sumeet Keswani

There is a charm to travelling alone that cannot be understood by those forever in company. It gives you time to brood over thebirds, the brook and the babble of a foreign tongue. And what better place to be cast away alone than on an alien seashore?

While I was born and brought up near the west coast of India, the east coast had always been an unknown quantity to me. Until this month, when I decided to take a solitary sojourn through Odisha. I started my journey with a day in Puri. Now I’m not into organised religion, let alone idol worship, but when you’re in the land of Jagannath, you cannot pass over a visit to one of the char dham. The main market street of the town was flanked by street vendors on both sides hawking everything from fruits and shells to miniature Jagannath idols that looked like bobbleheads and even T-shirts with his face imprinted on them. Near the eastern Singhadwara gate (one of four gates) of the temple, throngs of religious tourists in the narrow street disoriented me. That is when a young man in his mid-twenties, well groomed but dressed in old, multi-coloured robes, came to my rescue. I had expected guides here, but he was nothing I could have imagined. Laxmikanta Pratihari, 25, was a self-proclaimed pandit-cum-guide who spoke lucidly on history and faith in the same breath. His double role seemed almost oxymoronic when passers-by bent down and touched his feet as he led me on a guided tour of the temple complex, indifferent to the display of reverence. In turn, the locals didn’t stop for his acknowledgement or blessing.