Nerve Endings Firing Away

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On day two, our wedding party at Ginger had only ten people in the morning and the rest were due to arrive later that afternoon. We had arrived a day earlier just to be on the safe side and avoid the vagaries of the airline industry (one of my dad’s planning characteristic). The haldi ceremony which would kick off the wedding rites wasn’t due to start until evening which left us the entire morning and early afternoon free for a quick Bhubhaneshwar darshan. Getting ten people ready and out in the cars by 8am is a lot easier than doing so for 30 more as we would find out later. Unfortunately, a little miscommunication ended up making us wait for yet another hour before we could proceed to the older parts of the city. Although we were expressly told by Ash’s relatives not to go to the temples on our own, we decided to head out on our own only to be called frantically by one of her aunts asking us to please wait outside before entering the temple.

I had heard horror stories from Ash of pondas or rogue priests who whack people on the head if you don’t cough up money so I insisted we wait outside. The Lingaraj Temple is one of the more traditional temples in Bhubhaneshwar and also one of the most worshiped. As the name suggests, it is a Shiva temple. Actually, it is a temple complex that hosts nearly 108 smaller temples with little deities and even more vociferous priests who in a business-like manner try to lure you to their respective deity. We were lucky to have Ash’s aunt with us and quickly realized the importance of her advice of not entering the temple complex on our own. She quickly admonished most pondas and drove them away which in turn got a few curses hurled at us. Since most curses were in Oriya, I didn’t care and even if I had understood them, I would have laughed back. As Mehmood (in Bombay to Goa) retorts to “main tumko shraap detaa hoon” with a “main sharab nahi peeta“. Also, I failed to mention earlier that this temple is off-limits to non-Hindus and you are strictly forbidden from carrying your cellphone or camera and anything made of leather. So unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pictures. I am not sure how exactly the non-Hindus rule is enforced. Poor foreign (white) tourists are clearly kept away whereas Muslims theoretically could easily get in if they didn’t carry Islam on their sleeve (or head). But I wonder if you would want to go to a place where you aren’t welcome.

The temple architecture as in any traditional Indian state is breathtaking. Although the brittle sandstone is being rapidly worn away by the salty coastal air, the remnants are enough to help you imagine the grandeur of the place in its heydays. The shikhara or as it is called here, deul is uniquely shaped and arcs gradually to host a round beveled disc sometimes wide enough for a bullock cart to go around at its top (don’t bother worrying about how you would get them up in the first place!) Ash’s aunt gave us a quick history lesson regarding the temple’s origins and method of construction. Although my parents and other relatives went inside the garba griha, one whiff of the interiors and I stayed away. The place stank to the high heavens, no pun intended from the rotting of the milk and ghee offerings not to mention the thousands of sweaty people crammed in a small unventilated sub-basement. I wish tradition and customs would allow for modifying this mystifying aspect of temple architecture. I’m sure plenty more people would visit temples if this experience was a whole lot pleasant. I maintained my newly-found atheism by not joining my hands to the gods although later I would flout this rule in the countless wedding rituals and pujas.

The other temple we visited, Mukteshwar was much more tourist friendly and completely devoid of worshipers. We even spotted the occasional white tourists who were being strictly warned to stay away from Lingaraj. I could photograph this temple to my heart’s content and we could better observe the finer details of the temple architecture here than we could at Lingaraj. The temple strangely lies nestled amid modern urban civilization and borders an apartment complex so it seems just like another other neighborhood temple. I tried hard to avoid those ugly urban characteristics from my photographs. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go to the Raja Rani temple which is also another beautiful temple that most tourists to Bhubhaneshwar visit.

Back at our hotel, we expected the arrival of the rest of our guests. There was much chilam-chili when they arrived. Backs were patted and hands were shook vigorously as everyone settled down to a noisy lunch narrating tales of the flight and first impressions of Bhubhaneshwar. The ladies, of course, were sharing secrets on shopping expeditions and the men were more interesting in the availability of spirits. Generally everyone seemed to be in vacation mode and looking forward to the festivities.

More on the haldi ceremony later.

by Patrix | on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 10:00 am | India, Personal, Travel . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.