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Aurangabad ahoy

India has so many monuments that one spend a lifetime seeing them and still have a few left to see. Monuments, temples, sites, geographical wonders - there is a rich treasure trove for anyone willing to explore.

This one is about Aurangabad - Ajanta and Ellora to be specific. We started with Ajanta - which is a spectacular sight whether you see it from the view point on the top or you go cave by cave and wonder at both the genius, artistry and rigor of the humans who did this for hundreds of years. Going over the caves, takes the good part of a day at a leisurely pace and it is a place one can spend weeks getting into nuances. And this - after a significant level of destruction. One can just about visualize what the original works might have looked like.

And if Ajanta blows your mind away, Ellora takes you to another level. Specifically the Kailasnath temple. Imagine that someone decided to carve down (yes, down) a mountain - from the top and imagined a temple while carving it down. This entire temple was build top down - because thats the only way it can be built while hewing down a rock. And the entire structure, as stupendous and magnificent as it is, is actually just one rock. The enormity of the structure is evident when you see it from the top.

So, while one can work at different levels - the expertise achieved by rigor will stare in your face like it does when you see an Ajanta and an Ellora. You can cut it any which way, but what can be achieved by expertise cannot be achieved by chunks and bits ;)

PS: And at the end, my son asked me, what are we making that will last a thousand years? And the only answer I had was plastic...
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