Shore showpiece

The journey begins, literally, on the East Coast Road, the toll highway that brings you from Chennai to Mamallapuram. On either side of the road are small amusement parks, big resorts, eateries 8212; there8217;s enough tourism infrastructure to keep a day-tripper busy.

While the Shore Temple is its showpiece, the Mamallapuram World Heritage site actually has 29 monuments. A good part of the Rs 10 lakh that conservation assistant G. Saravanan and his 16-member staff spend annually on maintenance is devoted to landscaping. 8216;8216;ASI has its own horticulture unit,8217;8217; said Saravanan, 8216;8216;and we try to do a good job.8217;8217;

In Mamallapuram it shows. The sites are swept clean. A garden near the Arjuna8217;s Penance monument is pleasing to the eye. Till three years ago, the walkway to the gate of the Shore Temple complex was infested with shops. Now the encroachers have been removed and a garden has taken their place.

Mamallapuram neighbours Kanchi and is an ancient pilgrimage town. Apart from the 29 star monuments, there are many other historical temples here. As such, this has been the location for an ancillary industry of stone carvers, sculptors, temple artisans.

Traditionally the carvers have had their shops 8212; passed on from father to son, in some cases over centuries 8212; near the Shore Temple. While the relationship between the shops and the temple was 8216;8216;part of the intangible heritage of Mamallapuram8217;8217;, to quote a senior ASI official, it did prove a hindrance for modern-day tourists. An ungainly market and screeching hawkers, what their historicity, are not the stuff of a quality tourism experience.

Now tourists 8212; in 2004, Mamallapuram had 564,804 Indian visitors and 41,993 foreigners 8212; can walk in relative peace to the Shore Temple ticket counter. Should they ask, they will get for free a small all-colour booklet on the monument.

The Mamallapuram overhaul project was conceived by the state government. 8216;8216;It is important,8217;8217; conceded a Union Tourism Ministry official, 8216;8216;to have good officers in the state tourism office. The initiative has to come from them.8217;8217; It has led to 150 shops coming up in a market that is located near the Five Rathas complex and fits in with the aesthetic look of the surroundings.

8216;8216;All the small shops from the Shore Temple area,8217;8217; said Saravanan, 8216;8216;will move here.8217;8217; A new car park and tiled toilets are other utilities. The latter will replace the Mamallapuram panchayat8217;s 8216;8216;pay-for-use8217;8217; toilets that are, unfortunately, not always usable.

The 2004 funding also paid for a conservation effort at the monuments 8212; Rs 1.8 crore for the Shore Temple, Rs 2.5 crore for the Five Rathas, for instance. The Five Rathas are popularly associated with the Pandavas and their consort, Draupadi, but were meant, Saravanan says, 8216;8216;not for worship, but as temple samples8217;8217;. If a rich man wanted to build a temple and sought a design, he could inspect the Five Rathas and choose.

8216;8216;Part of the Five Rathas area was under sand,8217;8217; said T. Satyamurthy, superintending archaeologist, ASI8217;s Chennai circle, 8216;8216;in 2004 we excavated the original drainage system and activated it.8217;8217; Today, when it rains in Mamallapuram, the water flows out of the Five Rathas zone using drains built 1,500 years ago.

Built in the seventh century 8212; there is record of earlier incarnations going back at least 700 years 8212; the Shore Temple is in reasonable health. It was saved from the tsunami by a groyne wall erected in 1978, anticipating just such an eventuality.

The biggest threat to the Shore Temple is, however, still the sea 8212; in the form of saline water. As Saravanan said, 8216;8216;We use paper pulp to suck out the salt. But we would want UNESCO to help us with other methods. That8217;s where the World Heritage status may be of use.8217;8217; In Mamallapuram, the winning principle is the simplest one: keep an open mind.