Indra’s Drishtikona (Viewpoint)

US Observation #6: A visit to a temple in US

Posted : February 23, 2005 at 11:24 am [IST]

This past weekend was a “long weekend” as my sons/daughters here in US would say. With President’s Day on Monday, for three consecutive days Anand and Rajesh were having off. But Alpana who works for Cingular was having Monday as working day.

On Sunday, they made a plan to visit Shiva-Vishnu Temple, Livermore. This was the second temple that I was visiting. The drive through the picturesque valley was pleasant. The weather was fine though not sunny. The temple is small one on quite a large plot of land. Basically, it is a temple with many temples in it. The present trend is to have all gods and goddesses of importance in modern temple, unlike the old ones that used to be dedicated to one god, say, Shiva or Vishnu, or Shakti. The temple appeared to be sponsored by the South Indian populationin the Bay Area, as the donor list appeared to indicate. However, I may be totally wrong. Late NT Rama Rao, the one time Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, was the person who had inaugurated it.

It gives happiness when you find a large number of young people from different parts of India doing rituals with help of priests. A number of priests were conducting separate rituals for different families. It seems the younger generation is becoming more religious. In our days, we were not as religious as the currentgeneration. Particularly, in this foreign country the temple must be providing a source of inspiration to hard working knowledge workers and also some change from their mundane daily routine that imprisons them to some computer screen or a small cubicle of their office. I dont know how many of them enjoy their work and how many have no choice but this to make good money for good living.

One of the priests impressed me because of his height. He told me that the temple has 12 priests. They are here with their family. One Shri Mukhopadhaya is from Bengal too. Actually it was he who had the biggest crowd. He also warned me against taking photographs inside the temple and ordered to delete it. I am sure if I had known him earlier, I would have brought him to myside by talking to him in Bangla. He was the priest of Bajrangbali or Hanumanji - the monkey god. As it appeared Hanumanji is the most worshiped one here.

I don’t know why they have prohibited taking photographs or video inside the temple. But I was more shocked when one priest told me that the ban is only for taking the photograph of the deity, while the other gentleman told me to take photograph without flash. To be frank, I dont know how to stop flashing of digital camera that decides flash based on intensity of available light at the place.

Despite this little hiccup, I felt good to have all my three sons-two with wives and children were together in this temple in USA. Naturally, I never had thought of a day like this. I particularly enjoyed the way Keshav, and Anvita kept on bowing and at times prostrating before the different gods emulating their parents.

- Indra

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