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Showing posts from June, 2017

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2023 - The Year That Was

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

Paintings at the Pundrikji-ki-Haveli, Jaipur

I first read about Pundrikji-ki-Haveli on the ASI Jaipur circle website. It is said to be the home of Pandit Ratnakar Bhatt, the royal purohit (priest and advisor) at the court of Maharaj Sawai Jai Singh II, the founder of Jaipur. As the story goes, the pandit, originally from Maharashtra, was studying Astrology and Tantra Vidya at Kashi, where he met the King of Jaipur. Impressed with his knowledge, the king brought him back to Jaipur, making him the royal purohit . He was also given the title of “Pundrik”, probably an association with the town of Pandharpur (where he might have hailed from). The king, it is said, built him a Haveli, which came to be known as Pundrikji-ki-Haveli. The Haveli has some excellent examples of paintings, of the Jaipur style, prevalent during the 18 th century. Our visit to the Haveli is a long story.

The Temple of Neelkanth at Alwar, Rajasthan

Deep inside the Sariska Tiger Reserve , a narrow road led us to the foothills of a mountain. There, it abruptly stopped, and we wondered how we were expected to go on. Our driver looked at me accusingly, surely blaming me for getting us all lost, in search of a temple he hadn’t heard of. Just then, a local on a bike appeared, hurtling out of nowhere. Seeing us, apparently lost, he stopped, and we asked for directions. He simply pointed to the mountain, and said the temple was up there. I was aghast, at the thought of climbing the mountain, in the heat. But then he pointed to a rough path ahead, and told us to follow it. We stared at the path, if we could call it that, in dismay. But having come this far, we didn’t want to return without trying our best. And by now, our driver had discovered his adventurous side. Metaphorically gearing up his loins, he got in, and assured us he could get us up the mountain. The next hour was a trial for our nerves, as the rocky path took us higher, an