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Giriganga is a river that starts from the Himalayan range near Khara Patthar in HImachal Pradesh. The river joins Yamuna and continues to the dusty flood plains of India where around Delhi it is just a dirty, effluent ridden body of water that is not holy or sacred anymore.
Higher up in the hills, the sanctity that the ancient civilisations accorded to the elements of nature like Water, Fire, Procreation still seems to work as far as Water is concerned.
At the source of the river, there is a temple complex allegedly many millennia years old but I really wonder about that. There is a temple for Durga and other divinities of the Hindu pantheon, a tank where the water from the source is diverted and in the summers one or two priests and some occasional visitors or villagers from nearby.
The priest here, a resident of a village near Khara Patthar was very kind and offered me a glass of tea while he sat with one of the Hindu godheads painted in yellow and black. We talked about the local highlights of the snow covered winter months and the viability of a priest's profession in such areas.
The tea laced with cardamom and ginger was refreshing and surprisingly good.
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Light My fire. (Color)
This is the original color version of the BNW photo I posted yesterday.
No offense meant to the famous lyrics of the iconic rock band, Doors, but it sure is no time to hesitate and see how India is stuck in a quagmire of gender bias.
I am reminded of the grim novel "Grapes of Wrath" written by John Steinbeck dealing with poverty and migrant jobs at the time of the Great Depression in America. John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1962.
I remember reading the book in my school days but how much of it I understood is a totally different thing.
This girl child of a family of migrant workers from Rajasthan were camping a 1000 kilometres away from their dry waterless desert village. They were now in the cold and clean hills near Khara Patthar in Himachal and were engaged in construction of a large hall being made for trade in horticulture produce of the local area.
The open kitchen, the clanging aluminum pots and pans, the large open hall also served as their place to sleep.
Millennia have passed but the girl child continues to remain marginalized in a totally patriarchal society that is India. She should be at school learning.
India needs to light a fire. A fire of learning and understanding not empty slogans of our politicians.
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a house in making on a hill displaying stark contrast between the colors of nature.
The owner standing on the open door of upper floor, i asked " uncle, you have made a beautiful house, how will uyou enter 1st floor door".
"Yes it is, i am yet to put stairs. ", He said.
All sources of rivers in India are regarded as holy and rightly so. Religion is a brilliant invention that in today's world is used by its practitioners to manipulate and control vast swathes of human population.
I am sure when river sources located high up in the Himalayas needed to be given an air of sanctity and association with Gods and goddesses it was done so with a purpose to venerate the primordial resource that constitutes life on Earth. Water.
The door, a wooden one stood steadfast in light blue with a knocker and a red sash as it would in a Buddhist monastery. The boundaries between Buddhist and Hindu architecture can sometimes merge into eachother. No mistaking the fiery red sashes that adorn and cover the white marble statues of the motley collection of local deities from Shiva to Krishna inside.
Today water is getting scarce and will become scarcer( pardon the superlative) with time. In India we are unable to utilize the resource properly and already riparian states have been fighting over it for many years. At the local level, the availability is not so good. Water will get more expensive with every year that goes by.
I met an Orthopedic doctor a few days ago whose name is a derivative of Lord Shiva much like all South Indian names which are names of Gods and God's qualities and even God's procreative tools. He was of the opinion that if India were to ever have a revolution like the French did a few centuries ago, it would be the lack of water that would lead to it.
Here is hoping to change with or without water.
In the frame are the twin temples with a water tank where water from the source of the river is collected perhaps for a holy dip for the followers.
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This is view after a fresh snowfall on the mountain and the mesmerizing shot is captured near a village in Kotkhai-Rohru, Shimla
Besides being a primary deity of upper Shimla area, a temple dedicated to Mahasu Devta is also located at a place called Shiva-Dehra within the territory of Shikari Devi Wildlife Sanctuary. The temple can be reached via the route that leads to Shikari Devi temple from Bakhrote in Karsog sub-division of District Mandi. In this area, the deity is chiefly recognized as a weather god and locals flock this temple during inclement heat to seek rainfall from Mahsu Devta. The doors of this temple at Shiva- Dehra, we were told, open once or at most twice a year.
The deity is a Naag-Devta (Snake God) and lends its name to the oldest district of Himachal Pradesh- Mahasu, which conjoined other hill states to give birth to what now stands as Himachal Pradesh.
The principal seat of Mahasu Devta is located at Hanol in Jaunsar Bawara ; a remote pargana in District Dehradun (Uttarakhand) where it lies on the easternmost flanks of Yamuna watershed. There are numerous temples of Mahasu in Shimla district viz. Rohru, Theog, Jubbal, Chaupal & Rampur- where the deity has a stronghold.
A detailed account of Mahsu Devta and other cult deities of Himachal can be read in "Naga cults and traditions in the Western Himalaya"
By Omacanda Hāṇḍā
© Anshul Soni, All Rights Reserved.
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