If you are looking for some proper information on the ashtavinayak yatra and google ended up bringing you here, well, sorry to say you are at the wrong page.
I am not going to be giving any gyaan on the ashtavinayak yatra, the significance of the temples etc etc etc. As the title says, this blog is all about the yatra that I just finished today, totally 'Meri Zubaani'
Having been practically brought up in Bombay, the word 'temple' for me always meant Mahalakshmi Temple or Siddhivinayak Temple. It always meant a lot of crowd (well, that is synonymous with Mumbai not just at temples but any public place for that matter). It always signified a lot of commercialization and the haste in the Temple priest's pujas so that the crowd doesnt get built up.
But it also meant a lot of belief in God or rather, faith which over the years has kept Mumbai running to these temples inspite of the crowd and commercialization. And I am proud to say, I am totally, one such Mumbai-kar.
So, this August when I got a long weekend off at work, I decided to take my parents to the Ashtavinayak Yatra. For those who are new to this term, it is basically a journey to visit 8 Ganpati temples in 8 different villages in Maharashtra majorly located within a 500km radius circle with Pune being the centre.
So we load our car (a Swift Desire with more than enough boot space... Well, since we totally believe in 'Travelling Light', this was an absolute neccesity) and with a 'Ganpati Bappa Morya' , we are good to go. I insert my USB stick in the music player so that I dont have to listen to the crappy radio and the first song that comes up is 'चड़ी मुझे यारी तेरी ऐसी जैसे हो दारू देसी ...'. My mom's first reaction to this was,"Khushbu, Change the Song"... I was like.."uh..okay!". So, as I clicked on the next track, the speakers blared with "टल्ली हुआ टल्ली हुआ यारोँ देखो यारा मेरा टल्ली हुआ ..." Well, there were some more like this and it did take a few songs to get my Mom out of the culture shock. But poor she, had no choice, I had personally loaded all good ;) latest songs on the memory stick :D. और वैसे भी श्रद्धा तो मन में होती है ना । ;)
Well,the first Temple we visited was Girijatmaj Mandir, Lenyadri. Now this temple is situated in the 8th cave of the Lenyadri Caves and is a site governed by the Archeological Society of India. The way to this temple has 307 steps and trust me, that was surely 'some' physical excercise. But once you reach the top, the view is breathtakingly beautiful. and like is the case with every cave-type architecture built on the hills, we found a lot of monkeys roaming around the place as if they own them. This wasnt new to me as I have seen such monkeys roaming around even at Elephanta caves. But what really caught my attention was a shephard who had brought his sheep to graze at the neighbouring hill. He totally reminded of the character 'Peter' from the novel Hiedi.. one of my favorite classics.
What can I say... Rural Maharashtra did bring alive a lot of things I had only read about. Some of them, which I hadnt even read about. From Lenyadri, one-by-one over the next 2 days we visited the remaining 7 temples. One thing I did realize there, temples are not just about the God's Murti or the Temple priests chanting prayers. There are a lot many little things that go into building the faith.
First comes the Pooja ki Thali. Complete with the flowers,the माला, coconut and दुर्वा (the grass), this was the most simple and beautiful offering.
Every Temple has a legend, a story. And the best part was, each of the places where the legend highlights the victory of good over evil, the evil character was given almost equal (or maybe just a little less) celebrity status than the good. Just like the Rakshasas head which formed the first step at the entrance of the temples at Ozar, Ranjangaon and Pali.
This totally reminded me of Heath Ledger's dialogue to batman in The Dark Knight, "You exist only because I exist." ... brilliant!!! :D :D
The huge beautiful structures to place your diyas and the sound of manjiras that echoed almost at every temple just added to the purity of the ambience there.
Another thing that was new to me was..apparently, the exit door of any temple is supposed to be smaller than the entrance. And whoever constructed these eight temples really took this dictate very seriously. The exit doors were sized as small as 2 ft in width by 4 ft in height.
One more thing that was notably common was that almost every temple had a tortoise facing the Ganpati murti just at the entrance. I was told that a tortoise is considered to signify wealth according to Vaastu Shashtra. Wow, till now I knew that the tortoise signified wealth according to Chinese Feng Shui. This Vaastu Shashtra angle was totally new to me. No wonder. they say Hindi-Cheeni, Bhai-Bhai!! Atleast our literatures are associated someplace. ;)
After completing this yatra, I can surely say that visiting a temple in a metro like Mumbai and visiting one in rural Maharashtra is a totally different experience. The little rituals and tiny little things that add up to every ritual, every belief, every legend just makes your entire experience so beautiful.
Now, as I gear up to getting back to my hectic life at work and an even more hectic travel on the potholed, crowded roads of Mumbai, there is one thing that I shall surely miss from this trip....
THE ABSOLUTELY ZERO TRAFFIC ROADS :D :D
I am not going to be giving any gyaan on the ashtavinayak yatra, the significance of the temples etc etc etc. As the title says, this blog is all about the yatra that I just finished today, totally 'Meri Zubaani'
Having been practically brought up in Bombay, the word 'temple' for me always meant Mahalakshmi Temple or Siddhivinayak Temple. It always meant a lot of crowd (well, that is synonymous with Mumbai not just at temples but any public place for that matter). It always signified a lot of commercialization and the haste in the Temple priest's pujas so that the crowd doesnt get built up.
But it also meant a lot of belief in God or rather, faith which over the years has kept Mumbai running to these temples inspite of the crowd and commercialization. And I am proud to say, I am totally, one such Mumbai-kar.
So, this August when I got a long weekend off at work, I decided to take my parents to the Ashtavinayak Yatra. For those who are new to this term, it is basically a journey to visit 8 Ganpati temples in 8 different villages in Maharashtra majorly located within a 500km radius circle with Pune being the centre.
So we load our car (a Swift Desire with more than enough boot space... Well, since we totally believe in 'Travelling Light', this was an absolute neccesity) and with a 'Ganpati Bappa Morya' , we are good to go. I insert my USB stick in the music player so that I dont have to listen to the crappy radio and the first song that comes up is 'चड़ी मुझे यारी तेरी ऐसी जैसे हो दारू देसी ...'. My mom's first reaction to this was,"Khushbu, Change the Song"... I was like.."uh..okay!". So, as I clicked on the next track, the speakers blared with "टल्ली हुआ टल्ली हुआ यारोँ देखो यारा मेरा टल्ली हुआ ..." Well, there were some more like this and it did take a few songs to get my Mom out of the culture shock. But poor she, had no choice, I had personally loaded all good ;) latest songs on the memory stick :D. और वैसे भी श्रद्धा तो मन में होती है ना । ;)
Well,the first Temple we visited was Girijatmaj Mandir, Lenyadri. Now this temple is situated in the 8th cave of the Lenyadri Caves and is a site governed by the Archeological Society of India. The way to this temple has 307 steps and trust me, that was surely 'some' physical excercise. But once you reach the top, the view is breathtakingly beautiful. and like is the case with every cave-type architecture built on the hills, we found a lot of monkeys roaming around the place as if they own them. This wasnt new to me as I have seen such monkeys roaming around even at Elephanta caves. But what really caught my attention was a shephard who had brought his sheep to graze at the neighbouring hill. He totally reminded of the character 'Peter' from the novel Hiedi.. one of my favorite classics.
 |
| Living the scene from Hiedi with 'Peter the shepherd' at Lenyadri hills
|
First comes the Pooja ki Thali. Complete with the flowers,the माला, coconut and दुर्वा (the grass), this was the most simple and beautiful offering.
Every Temple has a legend, a story. And the best part was, each of the places where the legend highlights the victory of good over evil, the evil character was given almost equal (or maybe just a little less) celebrity status than the good. Just like the Rakshasas head which formed the first step at the entrance of the temples at Ozar, Ranjangaon and Pali.
The huge beautiful structures to place your diyas and the sound of manjiras that echoed almost at every temple just added to the purity of the ambience there.
Another thing that was new to me was..apparently, the exit door of any temple is supposed to be smaller than the entrance. And whoever constructed these eight temples really took this dictate very seriously. The exit doors were sized as small as 2 ft in width by 4 ft in height.
 |
| The exit door at Shree Mayureshwar, Moregaon |
After completing this yatra, I can surely say that visiting a temple in a metro like Mumbai and visiting one in rural Maharashtra is a totally different experience. The little rituals and tiny little things that add up to every ritual, every belief, every legend just makes your entire experience so beautiful.
Now, as I gear up to getting back to my hectic life at work and an even more hectic travel on the potholed, crowded roads of Mumbai, there is one thing that I shall surely miss from this trip....
THE ABSOLUTELY ZERO TRAFFIC ROADS :D :D
