Thursday, January 10, 2013

Malleswaram

Today we went to the neighborhood that borders the far side (from us) of the IISc: Malleswaram. Malleswaram was settled in the late 1890s, and today is considered a rather tranquil, middle class neighborhood. It has one of the oldest existing markets in Bangalore, dating back about a century, and lots of temples and shops. Best of all it's only a 3.5 km walk from our front door!

We left home around 10am and headed for a part of the neighborhood where a lot of the temples are located. Since it was our first trip there we went to the first temple we came to, the Sri Kaadu Mallikarjunaswamy Temple. There isn't a lot of information that I can find about this temple, but apparently it was built in 1669 after a shivalingam was discovered on the spot, so Shiva is the primary deity associated with the temple (though not the only one).

Here's the temple from across the road.





Before we went in we took off our shoes and left them with one of the many shoe-minders, and bought some offering flowers from this lovely  woman.


There weren't a lot of people in the temple. I mean, there were probably close to 100 other folks there, but the space was large enough that it didn't seem crowded, especially with everyone walking around. People seemed to be very devoted and religious. Everyone we saw was praying, bowing, kneeling, and making offerings. Most of the statues were small and unattended, but there was a priest with a statue of what I guess might be Shiva under a lot of flowers. The priest took people's offerings (food, flowers, money, etc) and placed them around the statue. Then he would remove some older ones and give them to devotees along with a blessing.



There was a cow or bull statue that was pretty popular as well.


 Virtually all of the signs in and around the temple were in Kannada, but this useful one about the nature of life was in English.




I particularly like "Life is an adventure: Date it"! I have no idea what that means.

The temple next door, the Sai Baba temple, was crazy, amazingly crowded. The line to get in stretched down the street, so we decided to skip it, and to see the Ganesha temple down the street another day too. Instead we walked back up the hill and headed to the Karnataka Crafts Council's shop. Nearly everything we bought there was a gift, so I can't say much ;) But the kids bought some things that they're really excited about! Liel got a wooden box with a bunny carved on the lid, and a clay necklace and earrings set, and Zion got a little Hanuman statue. We were kind of low on rupees so we didn't buy all the gifts we might like, but we definitely plan to return to both the shop and the neighborhood, so that was OK.

It was nearing lunch time at that point, so we headed back to campus. On the way I noticed that a lot of houses had devotional tiles set in the garden walls, like this one of a baby Ganesha and his parents.





We also saw a sign for a homeopathic doctor!


Oh Positive homeopathy, I like the way you think!

 There's also temple literally right outside that particular gate of the IISc. I'm not sure who's temple it is, but it has some great icons on it.


Unfortunately they're really high up and therefore difficult to photograph :)




So that was our day! It was pretty much perfect-- gorgeous weather, nice neighborhood, beautiful temples, gift purchasing, and a tasty lunch. 


2 comments:

Jo said...

Your days does indeed sound terrific.Thanks for all the photos, that helps. Since,you didn't say anything about the kids complaining, it would seem like they enjoyed the day too!

Anu said...

Wow! that's an interesting read about my favourite area in B'lore! :)
There are infact more temples on the street right behind the Kadu Malleshwara temple... actually they are visible from the back-door of this temple, but not sure if that way is open. You can take one of the streets next to Kadu Malleshwara temple and get to the street behind - there is the Lakshmi VenkataramanaSwamy temple and the Nandi(Bull) teertha temple which is very beautiful. It has infact been renovated recently when the kalyani (step-tank) there was discovered - it has in interesting history! :)

-babyloveknit in ravelry