Al-Sultan al-Azam wal Khaqan al-Mukarram Abdul Muzaffar Muhiuddin Muhammad Aurangzeb Bahadur Alamgir I Padshah Ghazi turned his attention to the chief of internal espionage. He drew a weary breath and braced himself for bad news. His master spy always had bad news these days, what with the Marathas constantly threatening the Deccan and Mewar growing mightier by the day. Plus, there was a growing threat on the western seaboard. The firangees, who had arrived barely a century ago as traders, had fortified their factories and were making noises about rights. Aurangzeb suspected that these merchants of silks and spices had military designs on Hindustan.
But it wasn’t of mortal combatants that the spy had come to report. His eyes sparkled and his face flushed as he described what he had stumbled upon during his journey to Bengal: a group of temples, overgrown by the jungle and known only to the locals, 152 kos (about 600km) southeast of Delhi. As the spy continued his narrative, Aurangzeb’s ears began to burn. To think these displays—graphic acts that could not be condoned even behind the curtains of his harem—were out there, etched in stone, within the boundaries of the realm!
The emperor authorized the spy chief to have the temples demolished asap. But a spy has many enemies and, the next morning, he was found in a questionable part of Delhi, a dagger in his back. And with him died the location of Khajuraho.
Was this the lucky break for the temples? Or is there another, equally fantastic tale of coincidences and compromises that was key to their survival? When it’s Khajuraho, bereft of all but the most skeletal of histories, it’s easy to let the imagination run wild.
What’s not purely a figment of the imagination, though, is the way the 1,000-year-old temples sustain a village economy in a destination that is still in the middle of nowhere. The perfectly proportioned eternal woman of Khajuraho demands—and receives—constant adulation from a stream of tourists. These aren’t the only temples in India to boast of erotica on walls. But, elsewhere, you need a guide to peer furtively at the walls. At Khajuraho, it’s as in-your-face as a 70mm cinemascope screen.
The capital of the Chandela Rajputs between the ninth and 10th centuries, Khajuraho earned its permanent place on the modern tourist map over a mere 100 years. Only 22 of the 80-odd original temples are still around in some state of repair. Of these, the Western Group of temples—including the Varaha, Kendriya Mahadeva, Mahadeva and Lakshmana—are the best preserved. Expectedly, these are also the biggest tourist magnets. Blushes, titters and wide eyes are commonplace in front of the Lakshmana Temple, where frieze after frieze depicts poses and positions, techniques and tricks and combinations and convolutions—including a guide on how to use a horse for more than riding.
But why all the sex?