The Kiradu temples

The Kiradu temples are a group of ruined Hindu temples located in the Barmer district of Rajasthan, India. Kiradu town is located in the Thar Desert, about 35 km from Barmer and 157 km from Jaisalmer. The ruins of at least five temples exist at Kiradu.

Coordinates: 25°45′10″N 71°05′52″E / 25.7528°N 71.0977°E

Thousands of people became statues.

A dead city.

Ancient city- desert and sand everywhere.

During the night, fear is everywhere here.

Nobody stays here for the night.

Different cries of animals are heard here at night. Nobody stays for the night. Carvings depict Samundar manthan. Each pillar of the temple has a story.

I. (The Carving)
The chisel's kiss, a lover's deep design,
On sun-warmed blocks of interlocking red.
A silent, stone and ecstatic divine,
Where every glance a universe has read.

II. (The Curse)
The sun departs, the desert cools its breath,
And shadows weave a curse the locals know.
This "Khajuraho" courted by a death,
Where ruins live, and living dare not go.

III. (The Legacy)
Not just a haunt for spectres of the air,
But for the ghosts of empire, lost and vast,
A Solanki dream in ruins, standing there,
Whose beautiful, stone heart was made to last.

 

The Kiradu temples, weaving together their history, art, and legend.

1. A Sonnet for the Stone

In Thar's hot breath, where shifting sands now hold
A whispered age of Solanki might,
Five temples rise in sandstone, tinged with gold,
Where day gives way to Rajasthan's deep night.
The Someshvara, for Lord of the Moon, still stands,
A lattice-work of gods and beast and man,
Where loving couples, locked by stone-wrought hands,
Echo the Khajuraho's ancient plan.
But when the sun retreats, a curse takes flight,
A spectral dread the local voices tell—
That any soul who stays to greet the night
Will join the stone, bewitched by its own spell.
So beauty sleeps beneath a haunted sky,
A frozen song that time cannot deny.

2. The Desert's Haunted Gallery

The desert wind, a sculptor, still refines
The curves of dancers on a sun-baked wall.
In Kiradu's court, where silence now befalls,
A petrified world in red-yellow lines.

The Vishnu pillars, where fine stories twine,
Of elephant and horse, in sacred thrall,
Now stand as sentinels, awaiting night's call
To guard the curse of this forgotten shrine.

Oh, do not linger when the dusk descends,
Where passion carved in stone now sleeps, alone.
The legend of a doom the locale sends
Turns living flesh to features like the stone.
A haunted gallery where time suspends,
And ghosts of artistry claim the dark as their own.