At a time, when beautiful Natural Rock Formations around the country are being pulverised by greedy quarry owners, particularly in Andhra where they were once abundant, here is a story from Gujarat. Here, the Natural Rock Formations protect the villagers, and the villagers in turn protect the Rocks that protect them!
Gangadharan Menon
At a time, when beautiful Natural Rock Formations around the country are being pulverised by greedy quarry owners, particularly in Andhra where they were once abundant, here is a story from Gujarat. Here, the Natural Rock Formations protect the villagers, and the villagers in turn protect the Rocks that protect them!
My earliest memories of nature’s own sculptures date back to my childhood. On the innumerable train journeys from Mumbai to Kerala, I remember them as fleeting images framed by the train window, as the train chugged through the state of Andhra Pradesh. But on a recent trip, I discovered that they have been razed to the ground by the greedy bull-dozers of quarry owners.
But one such gallery still remains intact in the state of Gujarat, tenaciously preserved by the villagers, even if it is because of a local legend.
This village is called Idar, and it is a 2-hour drive from the bustling city of Ahmedabad via Gandhinagar and Himmatnagar. Two kilometres before you reach Idar, you see them in the distance from a village called Saapawada.It is an exquisite open-air art gallery where God decided to display his artworks permanently. The entrance to this menagerie of frozen animals is fiercely guarded by a real dog.
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Once you take his permission after appeasing him with a few biscuits, you proceed ahead. But soon you run into a sculpted dog, and you wonder whether it was a real dog once, frozen by some curse for dereliction of duty.Though this exhibition was inaugurated many millennia ago, the work is still in progress. Not content with their current forms, God continues to work on them with his trusted artistic tools: the sun, the rain and the wind.The breathtaking display of his monumental body of work starts a little before you reach Idar. At a place called Saapawada or the Abode of Snakes. You concentrate on the ground looking for any sign of the creepy crawlies, but they are conspicuous by their absence. That’s when you see a gigantic rock in the shape of a snake, and it dawns on you from where the village got its name.Since time immemorial, man has invented friendly myths and reassuring legends to get rid of his primordial fear of the unseen and the unknown. One such legend exists in Idar.
It’s to do with its very name, Idar. This desolate place situated in the arid Aravallis is said to be the abode of two demons, Elva and Durg. Seeing them the villagers used to tremble and blurt out: ‘Idar Chhe!’, which meant `I’m scared!’The awesome abstract figures of Idar, most of them reminiscent of animals frozen in time, loom over this tiny hamlet. Gigantic in form and spirit, they seem to guard the village folk from the two fearsome demons lurking around the periphery of the village.As a gesture of profound gratitude, the villagers of Idar protect this incredible landscape from the modern-day demons: the quarry owners lurking in the nearby villages. Just so that these Natural Wonders could be passed on from this generation to the next.
All Photos by Gangadharan Menon
After 28 years in advertising as a writer and creative director, Gangadharan Menon quit the profession to take up his first and second love: teaching and travel. He has over 60 published articles that recount the joy of travelling in this amazing country. A member of Bombay Natural History Society, he is an avid wildlife photographer too. He can be contacted on wildganges[at]gmail.com
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