Ariel Glucklich - Climbing Chamundi Hill: 1001 Steps with a Storyteller and a Reluctant Pilgrim

Like most travelers, I was struck by my first sight of Chamundi Hill, a lone-standing mountain rising to just over one thousand meters, three kilometers south of the city of Mysore in southwestern India. Mysore is an attractive city of roughly one million people in the southern state of Karnataka. It is an old city, mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata as Mahishamati, a place the Pandava brother Sahadeva visited. Much later Mysore was the capital of old Mysore State, then a part of the Chola, Hoysala, and Vijayanagara kingdoms. These left the city and its area with magnificent monuments that, along with the citys royal palace of Shri Chamaraja Wodeyar, the yoga and Ayurvedic centers, and Chamundi Hill, draw many tourists each year.

The hill is renowned as the abode of Chamundi, one form of the Hindu goddess Kali, who is worshiped as Shivas consort and who is the family deity of the maharajas of Mysore. According to the Puranas, the ancient sacred texts, the buffalo-headed demon Mahishasura, along with his army of Asura demons, was terrorizing the gods. Unable to withstand his power, the gods united all of their powers and weapons to produce a powerful goddess. With these divine powers, the goddess slew the demon and is now pictured seated on a lion with a triton in her right hand piercing the body of the evil Mahishasura.

One thousand or so steps now lead up the northern face of Chamundi Hill for pilgrims visiting the sacred spot. Close to the top of the long flight of steps and facing the mountain is a huge sculpture of Nandi, the bull who is Shivas vehicle. At the top, devotees from all over India and abroad worship at the ancient Mahabaleshwara temple of Shiva and next to it seek divine blessings at a twelfth-century temple that houses a golden statue of Chamundi, mother supreme and primordial force.

I first visited Mysore and climbed Chamundi Hill in 1982 while visiting from Pune in Maharashtra, where I was working on my doctoral dissertation. It was a tourists visit; the mountain attracted me more for its physical beauty than for the temples or its sanctity to followers of the goddess. Since that time I have been drawn back to the city on a number of occasions, including a recuperative stay in 1993 at the charming old Metropole Hotel before it went out of business. It was then, under the influence of the beautiful city, that I began to plot a narrative about Chamundi Hill.

One afternoon I was wandering in the alleys of the city with a close friend when we stumbled into a tiny workshop where several members of a single family were chipping away at blocks of sandalwood. They were fashioning exquisite figures of Hindu gods and animals. Slivers of wood and discarded pieces covered the floor. Although this was not a retail shop, they invited us to sit and pulled out a couple of chairs. An older gentleman, who was not working, chatted with us about our nationality and halfheartedly tried to sell us a few expensive items. I found a broken image on the floor, abandoned in mid-sculpting. It looked like Krishna and Radha embracing, but the details had not been worked out yet. I asked how much the piece would cost, and everyone in the room broke into laughter. The older man said five rupeesa nominal figurebut congratulated me for identifying the gods. He sent out for some tea, and we spent several hours there, until the alley turned dark.

The spirit of this old man, with his unrushed hospitality and his endless stream of anecdotes, lies behind my decision to write Climbing Chamundi Hill. Of course, our host, whose name I do not remember, is far from unique in India. I have met many others like him, especially in Varanasi. Visiting the homes of sorcerers, healers, guides, priests, or just neighborhood pandits, I became accustomed to men who communicate through narrative, illustrating abstract or ethical concepts by means of vivid tales. Climbing Chamundi Hill is not just a book of stories and a book about stories, it is a book about storytelling and storytellers.