Of temples and sweet old ladies in them

On Saturday I planned on taking a tour of some of the big (famous) temples in this area. A manager at work, who's visiting from the US asked if he could tag along and I told him he was more than welcome. We started off with a small nondescript temple that's right in front of our office, so we just walked there. Then we went to see the famous Mansa Devi temple, which gives my neighbourhood its name - Mansa Devi Complex or MDC. The deity here is famous for granting boons. Since the rest of our trip was going to be a bit too far to walk, we bargained an auto driver. (I'm now convinced that the Chandigarh auto drivers are lower than the scum that is the Chennai auto drivers but more on that later.)

At the temple we had to take our shoes off and I was going to suggest we leave them in the auto itself, except that the auto driver left to get some tea by the time we had that idea. But as we were walking toward the temple, a bunch of kids swarmed to us, asking us to leave our shoes with them and that it was free. Now, like any other person who believes there's no such thing as a free lunch, I assumed that since these people were practically begging us to avail of a free service, either there were going to be "hidden charges" here or that we were flat out going to get our footwear stolen here. As it turned out, it was neither. The people really do provide a free service that they're eager to perform. Now, they do sell you some prasad which you aren't obligated to buy, but it really was a free service. I was impressed.

But right after we left our footwear behind, we were walking under a 108 F sun, on stone slabs that were bent on burning through our flesh. We managed to get to the shaded part of the temple by a combination of sprints and using various shaded patches. The oddest thing about the temple was its architecture. If I didn't know it was a temple, I'd have assumed it was a mosque, from all the minars and domes. From there we walked to the Patiala temple which is right next door. More hopping, sprinting, burning feet later, we got back into the auto and headed to the Chandi temple.

This is the godess who can claim to "put the Chandi  in Chandigarh". (Also, I'm claiming copyrights to "I put the grrr in Chandigarh, baby!" ) When the city of Chandigarh was being planned, the then President of the nation visited this temple and was so impressed by it not only did he decide to name the new city after the temple,Chandigarh, he even took a stone from the temple to lay the foundation of the new city.

At the temple we met the "pujari" was in reality a sweet old lady. She told us, well me, the story of the temple. Then, as I was about to translate it for my American friend "R", she gave me a booklet and asked me to give it to him, since it contained the story of the temple in English. It was beautiful listening to her talk and even though I was translating it to R, he got the sense that she was rather devout and sincere. Later she invited us to have some water in her house and there she told us about herself. She was born just a few feet from where we were sitting, in her ancestral home where generations after generations (38 generations according to the booklet!) of her family have been taking care of the temple. She talked about her family, her estranged daughter, her granddaughter, her daughter-in-law who wouldn't stop serving us one refreshing cold drink after another. She even offered to serve us lunch but I had to take off since the auto driver was in a hurry to pick up his own kid from school.

It felt nice to have talked to someone that sweet and both us returned to the city with positive energy.