Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
This one is the Ganpati from our colony - The Chedda Nagar Ganpati.
While the decor is usually something quite...well, ...just decorative, this year, the young lot organizing the festival seem to have had some interesting ideas..... not really surprising, considering the kind of issues on at the moment.
The idea is a balance between development and the environment, as depicted by the scales behind the Ganesha
On the left is the typical skyline of Mumbai - with skyscrapers and factories, complete with the roads built over the sea..
On the right is a typical village scene....
All in all, a simple display, one which suggests no solutions, but better than the usual run of the mill decorations... Samhith loved the houses and the roads, and has come up with lots of ideas for Navaratri!!!
While the decor is usually something quite...well, ...just decorative, this year, the young lot organizing the festival seem to have had some interesting ideas..... not really surprising, considering the kind of issues on at the moment.
The idea is a balance between development and the environment, as depicted by the scales behind the Ganesha
On the left is the typical skyline of Mumbai - with skyscrapers and factories, complete with the roads built over the sea..
On the right is a typical village scene....
All in all, a simple display, one which suggests no solutions, but better than the usual run of the mill decorations... Samhith loved the houses and the roads, and has come up with lots of ideas for Navaratri!!!
Festival wishes...
ReplyDeleteThey really get creative and its so wonderful to see these themes, visit the pandals and be a part of the festivities ...
ReplyDeleteHappy Ganesh Chaturthi:)