Aanchal Malhotra Recounts A Visit To Pakistan For Research

Research for her book, Remnants of a Separation, took author Aanchal Malhotra to a temple complex in Pakistan that not only holds significance to the Hindus in the country, but also represents a lost syncretism.

- Aanchal Malhotra

I looked around the exquisite landscape of ochre yellow buildings and blue-green waters. The poignancy of his words was not lost on me, since we stood at one of the most sacred sites of Hindu pilgrimage, the Katas Raj temple complex, situated in a lush embrace of the salt ranges of Kallar Kahar in Punjab, Pakistan. I was visiting the country as a part of my book research, recording the oral histories of the generation who witnessed Partition. This was, of course, a few years ago—at a time when tensions weren’t so flared between the two neighbouring countries. Having never seen the temples, I, along with two friends, set out to visit the site, arriving after a nearly four-hour car journey from Lahore.

Upon entering the Katas complex, the first thing one notices, amongst the cluster of temples and ruins, is the iridescent aquablue pool of water in the centre, a chashma. According to the Puranas, the pool was created from a teardrop of the inconsolable Lord Shiva, as he flew across the sky carrying the body of his beloved wife, Sati. The tears resulted in the creation of two magnificent pools on Earth. One, falling in Katas, Punjab, Pakistan, and the other—as if foretelling the Partition of the subcontinent—falling in Pushkar, India. This pool of water is regarded as sacred, even magical; our guide claimed that the heavenly green colour is a “kudrat ka karishma”, a miracle of nature. He told us that the word katas is derived from the ancient Sanskrit word ketaksha, which literally means ‘raining eyes’.

But it would be unfair to call Katas Raj, or Qila Katas, merely a site of Hindu pilgrimage, for it is a multicultural, multi-religious conglomeration of monuments that, in totality, serve as a destination for pilgrims from all over the world. It is difficult to gauge the age of Qila Katas, for it is rumoured to cover a cultural period of over 1,500 years.