The Foundation Plan

“Foundation plan,” read the hand-printed letters at the top right corner of the opened sketch book. The bound cover was light orange with an elastic band to hold the thick cotton pages in place. Deepak had owned this sketch book for only a few months, but it was already two-thirds full of drawings and notes. The small book was one of several that he had been filling since he had received his first one on his ninth birthday.The first sketchbook had been a gift to him from his uncle, who was an architect practicing from Pune. Deepak lived across India on the eastern coast in Odisha with his mother. Despite living a three-day drive across India from his uncle, the two remained very close. Deepak regularly emailed scans of his sketches to his uncle for “review.” Sometimes, his uncle would add notes and even include additional sketches over a copy of Deepak’s work. In this way, a series of collaborative palimpsests became valued possessions to each of them.

Deepak’s uncle had recently visited him for his fifteenth birthday and had presented the growing boy with a framed and matted copy of one such work for Deepak to hang on his bedroom wall. During the visit, the architect had challenged Deepak to learn the different parts of a typical Hindu temple. The uncle had promised that, if Deepak could show a comprehensive knowledge of temple construction, he would take a few weeks from his work so that the two could travel around the country to visit ancient temples. The bond he shared with his uncle-architect was, in many ways, founded on Deepak’s early fascination with a legend of a young boy who designed and installed the capstone on the top of the Konark temple. His uncle had first told him the story when he was just old enough to understand the word “building.”

With his uncle’s challenge fresh on his mind, Deepak fell into a routine of visiting local temple sites to add to his growing knowledge base. Often leaving his mother’s house early in the morning, the teen relished riding his bike to the worn steps of the ancient Konark Temple. When the weather permitted, he enjoyed sitting at the edge of the clearing surrounding the temple remains to see the sun rise against its eastern face. The temple was dedicated to the Sun God, Surya, and its orientation had been constructed so that each side of the carved block structure faced a cardinal direction.

In his sketchbook, Deepak had furiously drawn each face in quick loose scribbles before layering details. On the current page he was annotating basic plan nomenclature. Under and to the left of the “foundation” heading was a series of 90-degree angular forms blocked together in black ink to indicate a structural mass. The pulpy color of the paper expressed an open interior plan within the frame of ink. Numbers one through four denoted different areas within the black foundation. The drawn plan spanned the bottom half of both pages and a list was written above it.

The numbered list started with the numeral one followed by the designation “Ardha Mandapa.” Deepak looked at his list and mentally reviewed the meaning of each term. “The name denotes a half-open hallway that acts as a gateway to the, number two, Mandapa,” he thought to himself. “The Mandapa is a porch-like structure leading through the gopuram, or ornate gateway, into the temple. It is a place for public rituals.”

In his mind, he could hear his uncle telling him, “Many large temples have more than one mandapa. Someday, we will go to the Brishadisvara Temple in the town of Thanjavur. It is in southeast India and it is where your mother and I grew up. The temple has two mandapas opposing each other each with its own set of shrines. It remains well cared for!”

For a moment, Deepak daydreamed of seeing the ancient grounds his uncle had described to him. Then, mentally moving on, he looked at the number three. “Mahamandapa,” he read under his breath. “This connects mandapas to each other and to other parts of a temple. In the Konark temple it connects the Mandapa to the Garbh Griha (number four), or inner sanctum, where the idol of the main deity resides.”

The entry to the Konark temple had long been walled off to protect visitors from entering the deteriorating remains. Deepak sat back imagining what the inside of the Garbh Griha might have looked like. He had seen conceptual ideas through internet searches and had drawn his own versions from the fictitious descriptions. Finding himself daydreaming again, he wondered how the legendary boy could have capped a stone on the top of such a high temple. Had the boy sketched out his plans the way Deepak had learned to do? Naively, he wished that the boy’s sketchbook was hidden within the walled off confines of the temple’s inner space, waiting for him to discover it. As Deepak drifted to sleep sitting in the grass, warmed by the morning sun, he longed to know how much of the legend had been founded on truth.