A Visit To A Place Of Interest

It was a mid-term vacation in the month of February. The University examinations were on, and our college had to accommodate the examinees. We freshers were let off for a fortnight. So we resolved to spend a few days at the seaside at Puri.

We were a party of six,- all of the same age, but not from the same college. We coaxed some money out of our parents and guardians and made our modest preparations. We had plenty of guts and we were quite willing to rough it. We traveled third class by the Madras Mail, kept up all night as there was no sleeping accommodation, and were happy when the day dawned at Cuttack. We had a good breakfast, and after a change of train at Khurda, reached Puri when it was almost midday. We had arranged accommodation at a hotel where we slept off the effects of the rather tedious journey. To the seaside, we went in the evening.

For many of us, it was our first view of the sea. From the very moment of our arrival, we had been hearing the deep distant rumble of the sea-waves rolling even more; now we saw it lie before us in all its grandeur and greatness :

“Before their eyes in sudden view appear

The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, whose length, breadth, and height

And time and place are lost.”

We sat down on the sandy beach and gazed, silent and amazed, at ‘the multitudinous laughter of the waves,’ as they rose and tumbled and fell; and heard ‘the deep moaning with many voices’,-and the sight and the sound were alike sublime and unforgettable. Truly we felt with Whitman that the sea was an eternal miracle.

At Puri, we also saw the great temple of Jagannath, a miracle of architecture, built in the tenth century by King Anantavarman. It is an epic in stone; its conception and workmanship were typical of our ancestors who did everything on a grand scale. We took a day off to visit the thirteenth-century temple of the Sun-god at Konark that was completed by King Narasimha Deva. It was designed as a mighty chariot in stone drawn by magnificently sculptured horses. Nothing could exceed the vastness of the Puri temple or the monumental vigor of the figures at Konark. The temple at Bhubaneswar is also a noble structure. The human figures here are more tender and romantic. We wondered at the greatness of the people who had the genius to conceive and the power to execute a design so breath-taking in the vastness. At Puri, we saw many other places which are sacred to the Vaishnavas and realized the intimate contact that must have once existed between the peoples of Bengal and Odisha.

Our holiday was soon over, and we set out on our return journey. It had been a great experience for us. Visits to places of interest are not only exciting; they are educative as well. They widen our vision, sharpen our powers of appreciation, and add to our knowledge. By the sea-beach, we felt as though the horizons of our mind had been extended. Looking at the temples, we had an insight into the genius and history of our country: the spirit of the past suddenly seemed to walk out of the pages of history and stare at us. At the end of our visit, we felt more than ever how important it was for us to go out sightseeing whenever the opportunity would come our way in the future.