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Temples of Kashi - The Tilbhandeshwar Temple

The city of Kashi is filled with temples, big and small, old and new. There are temples at every corner, and you never know where you will stumble upon a small shrine. There are idols beneath what remains of trees (there are hardly any trees any more within the core area of the city), there are saffron covered forms resembling deities which seem attached to walls, an especially incongruous sight when the idol itself appears to be old, while the wall is evidently new…. And there are surprisingly large temples rising from what appear to be a bunch of houses. The city is sometimes colloquially said to be as old as time, and some of the shrines and temples are said to date back to times unknown, at least the deity itself, if not the structure. Not much remains of the ancient structures anyway. The city has seen more than its fair share of good and bad times. It has seen the heights of grandeur, and the lows brought about by destruction. The city that exists today has grown so haphaza...
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Our favourite Ganesha this year

This one certainly has to be the best one we have seen so far... not the Ganesha, the decoration, of course!! I am talking about the Ganpati at Chembur Station.

The Ganesha himself is rather nice....


.... and the decoration is based on Mumbai roads.....



Of course, not the potholed roads of reality, but the smooth and traffic-less roads we dream will be a reality someday....

But the main attraction here is the Monorail.... which is right now making life for us miserable, with all the roads being dug up, but which will hopefully bring some respite for us when it is finally ready in the distant future....
As of now, the model of this monorail runs smoothly to and fro, thrilling each and every visitor to this Pandal...


Samhith insisted on staying put till the Monorail made a couple of journeys to and fro, leaving only when a huge crowd entered, and the attendant politely asked us to leave!!! But at least now he knows what the monorail will look like!!!

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Location: Chembur, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Comments

  1. UshaSeptember 18, 2010 at 11:28 AM

    I remember the conversation with him about the monorail; this was in an auto on our way back to the building from his music class. And I remember thinking how he is the only person I know in Mumbai who is looking at all the digging positively :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. chitraSeptember 18, 2010 at 3:55 PM

    I am sure Samhith would have liked to stay in pandal for long.. So fascinating it looks. .All these festivals fills the mind with happiness.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MridulaSeptember 18, 2010 at 10:26 PM

    I can see that Samhith would have been fascinated by the monorail!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousSeptember 18, 2010 at 11:11 PM

    Oh lovely theme!! thats a gorgeous Ganesha!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anuradha ShankarSeptember 19, 2010 at 3:03 PM

    @Usha: Oh yes, i remember that conversation. he is still in favour of all that digging, but cant understand why they cant repair our road too... its much worse now... but he actually understood what the monorail would look like only when he saw it...

    @Chitra: oh yes... he would love to stay there all day long, but so would all the other kids too :) and some of these pandals are quite crowded, so they push us out after a while...

    @Mridula: oh, he's absolutely fascinated... cant wait for it!

    @Patty: oh yes, it certainly was the best one we have seen this year :)

    ReplyDelete

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