On hearing that I was visiting Mookambika, a friend wondered if I was on some sort of pilgrimage. The answer to that was no. But here I was, at the Mookambika shrine, deep inside the rainforests of Kollur, a village 130 km north of Mangalore. The Madras Mail from Mahe took four hours to reach Mangalore, from where Kollur is a three hour drive.
For some reason, Mookambika is a very popular temple among Malayalees. Malayalam is all you need to navigate the hotels, restaurants, and to ask for directions from shopkeepers. The shrine is small, pretty, and unique, thanks to its geographic setting. One of the legends is that the Devi consecrated herself at the spot based on a request from Adi Shankara. (Many other versions float around on the internet.)
The temple has a few Karnataka-specific forms of Shiva (Pranalingeshwara and Partheshwara) and also a shrine for Veerabhadra. While waiting inside the temple, I decided to regale my daughters with the stories of these deities—the Daksha Yagam, Sati’s death, the Shakti Peeths, Parvati’s marriage, Arjuna’s quest for weapons from Shiva, the Sarpa Sathra which was the backdrop for the narration of the Mahabharata, and more. Thanks to ChatGPT (mobiles are allowed in the temple premises), I was able to impress them and didn’t have any narrative hiccups!
The counter-questions were: “When did these gods live? How many years ago did these events happen? Why aren’t these gods alive? Why is Jesus the only God who was born on earth? Isn’t he the only one who went right up to heaven?” And so on…
I couldn’t stop by Udupi due to a lack of time. But the signboard that caught my attention was for Agumbe—the home of Romulus Whitaker, India’s most famous herpetologist and the founder of the Agumbe Rainforest Research Center. I also just discovered that Whitaker’s stepdad was the son of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. One of the biographies in the India Lives series curated by Ramachandra Guha is of Chattopadhyay. I should tackle it soon…
Addendum: My friend pointed out that I missed the most important trivia about Agumbe: the iconic television series Malgudi Days was shot there. 🙂
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