It was probably the first time that I was taking refuge in a House of God. The storm was brewing even when we began climbing the steps to the temple on the hill which overlooks Srinagar. By the time we reached the temple entrance, the wind had worked up howling speed. The big chinars swayed. A thousand feet below, in the old quarters of Srinagar, some roofs were blown off. Power cables snapped, plunging large areas of the Valley into darkness.Inside it was calm, though you occasionally heard the whoosh of the wind. The compact, windowless structure which houses a black Shivalinga and almost nothing else keeps the elements out. The exterior too is unpretentious; just blocks of stone put together. Almost like a sangar, which the Kargil-literate would tell you is a stone fortification. Standing at the entrance and watching the rain, I imagine enemy positions on the mountains which dominate Shankaracharya Hill. The structure is strong enough to take a direct hit from an artillery shell, I tell myself.It'san incongruous thought, which passes as swiftly as it comes. And in any case, nature is all-powerful. A few centuries back, an earthquake did damage the shrine and it needed major repairs. ``It is supposed to be 2500 years old but Shankaracharya came here only 1400 years back,'' the young pujari says when I interrupt his evening chore of mopping up the place. He is right about the shrine being already ancient when Shankaracharya visited, though he is out by a couple of hundred years. That hardly matters. A century here or there doesn't really count when one is talking millennia.Kargil happens to be on the mind of the pujari as well. He laments that the flow of devotees has thinned dramatically because of the jang. True, for soldiers and tourists form the bulk of the devotees - particularly at a time when Kashmiri Pandits are in exile outside the Valley. Like Adi Shankaracharya, the Adi Tourist from present-day Kerala, they come to the temple from all over. A small brass bell hung at the entrance has NaibSubedar S.B. Thapa's name and address inscribed. The soldier came from Lumbini, the cradle of another great religion whose decline in eighth century India is sometimes attributed to Shankara himself. Shankaracharya took on Buddhism, dialectically, even as he travelled all over the land to mark the outposts of his own religion.The soldiers would mostly come on Sundays, their units sometimes arranging transport for them. For many tourists, the temple was the first stop on their list of must-see places around Dal Lake. At Nishat Garden one could tell the tourists from the locals by the vermilion marks on their forehead; a reminder of the temple visit. Some security personnel brought their guns along, some cameras. But Kargil scared the tourists off and the soldiers disappeared to the front.Some other regulars however have been making the Shankaracharya Hill trip throughout Kargil. Accompanied by their teachers, children from a Srinagar school come on regular excursions. The pujari is happy they drop in atthe shrine. ``Some accept the prasad, some don't. But we are happy they come for a darshan.'' He says the temple welcomes everyone; Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims.The pujari is from Barauni in Bihar. He came to Srinagar two years ago, called here by a mahant he knew. The mahant died, but he was asked to stay on and serve in the temples in the city. And only a fortnight back, he was deputed to Shankara's temple as a replacement for another pujari, who was called suddenly to his Maker. He had taken time off from the temple to visit his home 150 kilometres away at a place called Ramban, or God's own garden. There, taking a shortcut through a hill track, he fell off. He was not fighting in Kargil. Neither was a storm raging that day. I found that a bit unfair. But He knows best.
