Niyantha
Giriraj
“When an actor comes to Jaipur, there’s a crowd. You go to a liquor store, there’s a crowd. But no one wants to come here,” Giriraj said.
He had guided us through Amer Fort and then brought us down to a temple he insisted we must see.
“This is a special place,” he said. “I often ask people to come down here, but they don’t. They think it’s just another temple.”
The quiet of the Jagat Siromani temple was a marked change from the tourist chatter that enveloped the much more popular Amer Fort. Even though it was a temple originally dedicated to Krishna and Radha, it was now known as the Mira-Krishna temple. A step inside and it was easy to understand why; there was an idol of the poet-saint beside the idol of her Lord.
“This was Mira’s Krishna,” Giriraj said.
It took me a minute to fully grasp what he meant. The idol of Krishna I was looking at was one that Mira had held in her own hands. It was an idol she sang and danced to. It was an idol she looked to for strength, an idol that reminded her of the pain that accompanied love.
And here Mira was, immortalised next to the Lord she so longed to be with. The passage of time alone can add significance to a work of art. But when there’s context and the silence to absorb it, boy is it moving.
“I brought a Punjabi couple here once,” Giriraj said, as we sat outside the temple collecting our thoughts. “They loved it so much that they said if they got married, it would be at this temple. I nodded, and then forgot about it. A few months later, I got a call. ‘Hello, do you remember me?’ someone said. I guide so many people here, so I didn’t recognize the voice. ‘You took my girlfriend and I to the Mira-Krishna temple,’ he said. That immediately brought back the memory. ‘Yes, I remember,’ I replied. ‘Well, we are getting married. And it’s going to be at the Mira-Krishna temple. We want you to come.’”
Giriraj smiled. “And they continue to visit this temple every year.”
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People in Rajasthan (Part 16 of 26)
Giriraj
“When an actor comes to Jaipur, there’s a crowd. You go to a liquor store, there’s a crowd. But no one wants to come here,” Giriraj said.
He had guided us through Amer Fort and then brought us down to a temple he insisted we must see.
“This is a special place,” he said. “I often ask people to come down here, but they don’t. They think it’s just another temple.”
The quiet of the Jagat Siromani temple was a marked change from the tourist chatter that enveloped the much more popular Amer Fort. Even though it was a temple originally dedicated to Krishna and Radha, it was now known as the Mira-Krishna temple. A step inside and it was easy to understand why; there was an idol of the poet-saint beside the idol of her Lord.
“This was Mira’s Krishna,” Giriraj said.
It took me a minute to fully grasp what he meant. The idol of Krishna I was looking at was one that Mira had held in her own hands. It was an idol she sang and danced to. It was an idol she looked to for strength, an idol that reminded her of the pain that accompanied love.
And here Mira was, immortalised next to the Lord she so longed to be with. The passage of time alone can add significance to a work of art. But when there’s context and the silence to absorb it, boy is it moving.
“I brought a Punjabi couple here once,” Giriraj said, as we sat outside the temple collecting our thoughts. “They loved it so much that they said if they got married, it would be at this temple. I nodded, and then forgot about it. A few months later, I got a call. ‘Hello, do you remember me?’ someone said. I guide so many people here, so I didn’t recognize the voice. ‘You took my girlfriend and I to the Mira-Krishna temple,’ he said. That immediately brought back the memory. ‘Yes, I remember,’ I replied. ‘Well, we are getting married. And it’s going to be at the Mira-Krishna temple. We want you to come.’”
Giriraj smiled. “And they continue to visit this temple every year.”
—-
People in Rajasthan (Part 16 of 26)