A 65-kilometre stretch of sun-scorched road connects Mahabalipuram to the fabled city of a thousand temples, Kanchipuram. There are 650 stone inscriptions in Kanchipuram belonging to different dynasties. The temples here reflect the maturity and efflorescence of Pallava art and the ornate and often imposing embellishments were produced later by the Chola, Vijayanagara and Chalukyan kings. There is a solemn grandeur, a grandiosity of vision and ornamental excess in the temples here. A disembodied otherworldly stillness impregnates their vast inner domains where time is a captive fugitive. The Ekambaranathar temple, the Kailasanatha temple, Sri Varadaraja temple, Sri Vaikuntaperumal temple… the names stretch endlessly. The city itself is dedicated to the presiding deity, Sri Kamakshi (one with eyes of love) at the Kamakshi temple. In Sanskrit, the word Kanchi denotes girdle, and poets have allegorically characterized the city as a girdle to the earth . And so it was. A seat of learning that attracted scholars from far-flung corners of the globe. But what has now girdled the earth is the gold-embroidered Kanchipuram silk sari that has been for centuries a prized possession of the South Indian woman. Shops dealing with silk and cotton saris and material line the main street of the town and for a demonstration of the skills of the Kanchi weavers, visit the Weaver’s Service Centre on Railway Station Road Kanchipuram is the only city in South India to have played such a dominant, decisive and continuous role in the history of the peninsula. At one time, it was the hub of the empire, of pomp and panoply. Today, it is a small place that time has forgotten. Royalty abandoned it long ago and history shifted its allegiance to other more dramatic arenas. And in the quiet interregnum of the centuries when life thundered by elsewhere, the ancient city, wrapped in nostalgia, too proud to change with the times, withdrew from the mainstream. To become what it is today. An Arcadian fastness of beauty. A dreamy detachment and a quaint medievalism, the lasting impression of which one consigns to memory.

Just out of Chennai, roughly 55 km away, is the world-famous town of Mahabalipuram. The Pallava dynasty of Southern India, one of the major lines of kings to rule in India after the Gupta period, made this lovely seaside village their second capital. The place blossomed under the creative forces of that time between the fifth and eighth centuries. Today, the shore temple, the largest bas-relief in the world called Arjuna/’s Penance and the famous and beautiful mandapams are what identify this sleepy town.