CHITTORGARH MEMORIES

It was a huge super-deluxe tourist bus. It surprisingly managed to negotiate the narrow entrance point at the foothill, on the road that took you up through sharp hairpin bends to the top.

The driver was a well built
young man who was an excellent driver. An ordinary driver could not have taken such a huge bus through those sharp hairpin bends.

When the bus arrived 'up above' at the chittogarh fort grounds we heaved a sigh of relief and had a birds eye view of Chittor town below and the chittor railway station.
( Buses were not allowed to go up on my subsequent visit two years later. Auto rikshaws had then been introduced to ferry the tourists up and down for a reasonable payment. A wise step ! ).

I had seen so many forts earlier - the red fort of Delhi and the Allahabad fort for
example. These are noted for their grandeur-in-stone. These forts are essentially massive strong fotified
areas into which army and people retreated when under attack by a much more powerful enemy batallion, in order to protect themselves while reassessing their strategy.

Chittorgarh was a different cup of tea altogether. It is not just a massive fortified structure, it is a small  township atop a  hillock and the hillock itself has been fortified. In a way, thus, it entitles itself to be one of
the largest forts in the world. It is a vast flat land up there. There are
roads, trees, vast water catchment areas and grass lands. There are temples , magnificent buildings and
ofcourse the famous VIJAY STAMBH,

a breathtaking tower that takes you up
through a winding staircase for a good view of the whole area around
and the lands yonder! Vijay stambh was, as the name suggests, constructed to commemorate a victory.

And at Chittorgarh there is the LEGEND of the valiant Rajputs, of Rani Padmini ; of the 'Jauhar' (self
immolation) of hundreds of women when Allauddin Khilji broke through the resistance of the valiant rajputs to get what he had come for - the stunningly beautiful Rani Padmini, the Queen of Chittorgarh.

( Poet Malik Mohammad Jayasi subsequently immortalised the event in his famous PADMAVAT  in 1540 CE).

In the company of a good guide you can 'live through' a period now buried deep in history. The guide takes you to the room where Allauddin khilji saw Rani Padmini's reflection in a huge mirror while she stood in the adjascent room.

The guide takes you to the ground where, in the year 1303 CE the rajput women consigned themselves to fire, to save their honour, in the ceremony called Jauhar. The very ground on which I stood was the theatre of one of the
bloodiest pages of Indian history and the thought sent a shiver down my spine. It was a very spiritual moment for me. I felt that I was myself actually witnessing those events unfolding before me - events of centuries far back in time, the war cries, the battles, the jauhars, the mystic singing of Meera bai and the courage of queen
Karnawati as Bahadur Shah laid a seige of Chittorgarh !

Chittorgarh is where Meera Bai the most famous female Hindu spiritual poetess
lived.

Her compositions are still popular throughout
North India ("mero ♡ to ♡ gridhar ♡ gopal ♡ doosaro ♡ na ♡ koi"). Her poems follow the Bhakti tradition and she was devoted to love of Bhagwan (God incarnate) Sri Krishna. Here is what wikipedia says about her :

" Folklore says that her
love for Krishna was
epitomized by her final
disappearance in the temple of Krishna in Dwarka. She is believed to have entered the sanctum of the temple in a state of singing ecstasy after which the sanctum doors are believed to have closed on their own and when later opened, the sari of Mirabai was seen enwrapped around the idol of Lord Krishna symbolizing the culmination of her union with her Lord."

There is also the folklore that she was made to drink poison for her love for God (in his incarnation as lord krishna) but poison turned into nector when she drank it.

Chittorgarh is remembered for its legendary queen Karnavati, the grandmother of the great Maharana Pratap. There is a legend of Karnavati sending a Rakhi (the sacred thread that a girl ties on the wrist of her
brother during the hindu festival of Raksha bandhan) to moghul emperor Humayun when chittorgarh was under seige by Bahadur shah,
asking for help. Humayun abandoned an ongoing military campaign to ride to her rescue, thus her name became irrevocably linked to the festival of
Raksha Bandhan . .
. . . Humayun failed to reach there in time.
Before his arrival Bahadur Shah had entered Chittorgarh and ransacked it for the second time. Realising that defeat was imminent, Karnavati and
the other noble ladies of the court immolated themselves in a mass
suicide by fire, while all the men donned saffron clothes and went out
to fight to the death. Humayun did defeat Bahadur Shah and then reinstated Karnavati's son Vikramaditya Singh as
the ruler of Mewar ."

I will be remiss in these reminiscences if do not mention the great son of
Rajputana, Maharana Pratap (1540-1597) who dedicated his entire life fighting the greatest of the moghul emperor, Akbar. While he could not
recapture Chittorgarh , he recaptured vast areas of Rajputana. His last epic
battle against Akbar at Haldighati (june 1576) has been immortalised by the hindi poet Shyam Narain Pandey in his epic poem HALDIGHATI.

The journey back into TIME being over now , our bus left the fort on its
long journey back to Delhi. As the bus travelled downwards I had the strange feeling of stepping out of the pages of
history into the material world of the day. Somewhere inside me was the feeling that a long time back, in another life, I belonged to this place,
Chittorgarh, which will always be remembered for the valour of the
Rajputs men and women.

Legends never die. As Tennyson puts it, "men may come and men may
go but I shall go on for ever".

Chittorgarh will always be there . . .
far into the future , in timelessness !!