Where the old and new meet

Hills and windmills, fields and a fort, temples and a lake, Savadatti has all these and more, discovers Jaidev Karunakaran.

The road from Dharwad to Savadatti has some of the worst sections in the country. Where tarmac once existed, dusty potholes can be found now. Buses rush past in a cloud of clattering metal and dust – dust that was once red earth brought from afar to build a road across the characteristic black cotton soil. Trucks keep going up and down this benighted road spraying water, creating a temporary slush while the ragged brown cotton plants in the fields seem to look on with wretched thirst.

There are good sections too and work is going on, though slowly. Eventually, the hills around Savadatti start to become clear in the distance. Windmills appear, their vanes circling slowly in the haze. We start nearing, the crowds increase and the car’s progress slows to a crawl to a point where it’s faster to get out and walk.

The heat is intense and there are carts and bullocks and women cooking out in the open. “There’s a jathre on,” a man says, “so the crowds are more. But, nowadays there’s a jathre on all the time.”

A splash of colours

The last few hundred metres to the Temple are through rows of shops selling packets of yellow and red powder, which everyone buys to throw at the sanctum sanctorum. Inside the Temple compound though, colours are being thrown everywhere.

Yellamma Devi Gudi was once a centre of the devadasi cult, a practice that now appears to be almost eradicated. The place is now a stronghold of women – women walking around in trances, rolling on the floor, walking around carrying pots on their heads.
We come out and take a winding road, past hundreds of wagons with arched roofs, packed with people dyed with red and yellow colours, oxen pulling the wagons and lamps dangling between the wagon wheels, till we reach Savadatti Fort.

The Fort is quite impressive and dominates the town. At the entrance, a board declares that the Sri Kadasiddeshwara Temple inside was completed between 1635 and 1638. Later, Immadi Jayappa Desai, a local chieftain, built a palace that was burnt down in 1942 during the Quit India movement. Inside the Fort, there’s now a fairly well-maintained lawn and garden and people enjoy a nap in the shade of almond trees.

Peaceful surroundings

We begin climbing a steep flight of stairs and enter the small, peaceful temple courtyard, so different from the frenetic chaos around Yellamma Gudi. There’s a view of Savadatti town below, the yellow rocky hills that surround it, and the pale blue expanse of Renuka Sagar in distance.

Renuka Sagar (Renuka is a name for Yellamma Devi and appears everywhere in this area) is a lake formed by damming the Malaprabha River at Navilteerth. There’s a garden around the dam but the bushes and hedges are now overgrown and rubbish is strewn everywhere.

Old buildings still stand strong with the stones used to build them, but their windows are smashed and litter fills their insides. The dam is still functional though and provides water for drinking and irrigation to large parts of North Karnataka. Its construction, machinery and its setting in a gorge with the vast lake behind it brings out an interesting blend of engineering and nature.

From Navilteerth to the Shiva Temple at Sogal is a journey through vast sugarcane fields. Everywhere it’s mature sugarcane in fields, sugarcane being cut and loaded in bullock carts and tractors, green shoots coming up from the soil and sugar factories, the biggest being Shree Renuka Sugars near Munoli, with its own township, and the vast maidan full of farmers with their loads of sugarcane waiting to be weighed.

The old Temple at Sogal is on the top of a cliff and when it rains, there’s a waterfall that people believe has medicinal properties. Now there’s just a pond, filthy with green scum and polythene bags and a few hundred steps beside it leading to the Temple.

The Temple is ancient and quiet. There’s no electricity and hundreds of lamps are lit. There are many people but there’s no evidence to that with the all-pervading silence with just the occasional ringing of bells. Below the cliff,are miles of sugarcane fields, darkening in the dusk, lit up by the occasional fires of harvested fields set alight for the next crop. A cycle is complete and so is my journey.