Heaven on Earth – Sundays in my city

In this Sunday in my city I am going to take you around Sundays I spent in different cities. I am calling it heaven on earth because they are all deities outside temples. In South India, they usually don’t allow you to carry your camera inside the temple and take pictures of the main deity in the sanctum sanctorum.

Why temples this week? I was just going through my photo albums for something when I got this idea of choosing a few and post them here. I enjoy, particularly, the roadside statues of deities because I admire how they are made so meticulously with such attention to detail. What’s more – most of these open air statues seem practically immune to weathering. Ah, Faith! No dearth of that here. So here we go. A brief temple trip through my camera.

This is quite close to our house in Bangalore and called the Circle Maramma temple. Believed to be quite powerful. This statue is outside the temple and quite massive. Vidur never tired of taking pictures of this temple. Thank God for digital cameras!

This picture is of an incarnation of Goddess Durga in South India (Tamil Nadu) – we passed through this place en route to Govindawadi. She is “Pachaiyamman”

This is also near Govindawadi (Tamil Nadu) – and these are the guarding deities.See the bright colors – we were quite stunned when we suddenly came upon them while driving through a narrow road across fields on a hot summer Sunday.

This deity is “Amriteshwari” I forget the story, but we were quite fascinated by this statue. It is in South Karnataka

This is Maha Prathyankira Devi at a place called Morattaandi in Pondicherry. Wow. It looked amazing. I had to sneak and take pictures when the priest went off to get something. You can see Vidur and me posing there – just to give you an idea of the size of the statue.

This is Shiva – in Murudeshwara, Karnataka. This place is by the seashore and the outdoor sculptures are amazing. I couldn’t get enough of photographing these. This statue seems to rise and rise – see the people crowded at the bottom. Yes, it is huge!

This statue is of Thiru-Vakrakaali, en route to Pondicherry. We were looking for another temple when we took the wrong route and stumbled upon this one…and then realized this was also on our list. When one goes on temple trips by car – it is very easy to get distracted by the multitude of famous temples on the way, because we don’t want to miss anything.

Okay – I know the post should have ended with that picture, but I couldn’t resist this. This is Vidur – dressed for a fancy dress competition at school.  Of course he is Goddess Durga. Don’t miss the eight hands with different things in each hand – cardboard cutout courtesy Moi. And the crown I am a big believer of home made. I was very gratified when he walked away with the first prize, out of more than 75 participants.

Thank you folks – now go visit Unknown Mami and check out her gorgeous pictures and the other fabulous blogs that are part of this “Sunday in my City series.