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Showing posts from April, 2011

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Odisha Part 6: The Yogini Temple of Hirapur

I fell in love with this temple the first time I set eyes on it. Back in 2017 , I had been excited to see yet another Yogini temple, when I visited Puri. The resort I was staying at (and writing for), had arranged for a car and driver to take me around. The driver was happy to take me to most of the places I wanted to go, but when it came to Hirapur, he was appalled. He knew of the temple, but had never been there. It was a tantric temple, one not visited by women, and certainly not women travelling alone. He tried to convince me not to go, but my stubbornness and persistence paid off, and he reluctantly agreed when I told him that if he didn’t take me, I would find another driver who would. All along the way, he kept going on about the sinister things that happened at the temple, the tantric rituals that were performed at night…. An Odisha brahmin who took his religious duties very seriously, to the extent of stopping the car to perform the sandhyavandam when he deemed it time, he...
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Collaborative Posts

My blog seems to continue on the 'silent mode' while I am busy with so many things...... On one hand, as I mentioned earlier, I have been travelling quite a lot, on the other hand, I have also been busy writing about things other than travel...... Most interestingly, for the first time, I have been part of two collaborative posts on two different sites.....
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An occasion to celebrate

Last week when I returned from Delhi, the foremost thing on my mind was to update my blog. There are reams of things I want to write, but I found myself unable to write anything at all. The only thing I wanted to share was about the function I attended at Delhi, but then again, it wasn’t easy, since I haven’t really written much about my family. So, after a lot of thinking, here I go…. To give you people a brief background, I grew up with my mom’s side of the family, since my dad passed on when I was five. I have 3 mamas (maternal uncles) and one chitti (maternal aunt). The use of the traditional Tamil names is simply because each one of them has an important place in my heart, and to call them by the universally used name of uncle/aunt somehow doesn’t ever fit.
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Sky Watch Friday - Qutub Minar

The whole of last year, I complained that I was unable to travel, and thus couldn't think of anything to write. Someone up there seems to have heard my complaint, because this year, the situation has reversed. I am travelling almost every month, sometimes even twice a month, and have tons to write, but no time at all to sit down and pen down my thoughts. Those of you who are wondering where I disappeared to, I was at Delhi, attending a family celebration, meeting relatives aged between 6 months and 97 years! It was a wonderful experience, besides which, it was a wonderful trip also because I managed to get in a bit of sightseeing with all the catching up with my cousins! Here is one of the images from my trip - the Qutub Minar. We visited the place in the afternoon, in the searing heat, and wandered about for an hour, realizing that I remembered practically nothing of the place from my earlier visit, which was sometime when I was at school. One thing was certain, though -...
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