Fabulous reality. Dreams of Jan's cave.

When you are here for the first time, you are amazed at what you see. Among the low mountains covered with amazing tropical plants, suddenly a fantastic view opens up of two rocks, so huge that the age-old trees next to the rocks look like shrubs. Around dozens of smaller stones are hidden in the forest, some of them stand along the path leading to the main rocks.

In Hindu mythology, this place is associated with an event in the life of Asura, the king of demons Bhasmasura. Bhasmasura, at the end of a severe austerity, received a gift from Shiva, which was that he could burn anyone with his hand, turning him to ashes. Bhasmasura allegedly wanted to test his power on Shiva. And Vishnu, to help Shiva, took the form of a beautiful girl named Mohini. Having lured Bhasmasura with her beauty, Mohini provoked him to a dance competition. During a dance competition, Mohini performed a dance pose with an arm over her head. Unaware of the seriousness of this act, Bhasmasura also placed his hand over his head and was reduced to ash. It is believed that the fire during the incineration of the demon was so intense that the limestone formations near the Jan's village turned black.

Two huge rocks are named after this event: the high peak Bhairaveshwara Shikhara ("Shiva's hill"), and the second Mohini Shikhara ("Mohini's hill"). The largest stone of Bhairaveshvara is considered to be an entire temple. To me, another unscientific version seems prettier, that these rocks are the fossilized remains of incredibly huge trees, perhaps a kilometer high. These trees, huge as the whole universe, lived millions of years ago and saw a completely different world and another planet. The entrance to the cave inside the rock passes through an ancient temple located at its foot and according to the rules of all Hindu temples you need to enter without shoes.

But it is by going all the way barefoot that you can feel the energy of this place more strongly. Gradually you are permeated with the feeling that the rock and the cave in it, this living creature is moving, changing and feeling. The structure and warmth of stone, like wood fibers, gives a pleasant touch. When you remain alone inside the cave-temple, you hear the pristine silence, so all-encompassing that even the movement of air is perceived as a powerful movement of ocean waves, you feel like you are immersed in this universal flow of time. You see the images that these stones have seen in your life and you move with them in the opened timeless space towards the dreams of Jan's cave. Fragments of fantastic reality, spied on in the meditation dreams of the cave, do not let me go, and I will again and again try to capture them in my watercolor paintings.

Regards, Artist Polyakov K.G. (Gandhi)

To the page "Watercolor": https://www.yoursartgallery.com/watercolour