All posts filed under: Kumaon

The Grand Night of Shiva and A Day of Beautiful Meanings

The morning arrived. A big day. Like a loved one’s birthday. And everything was planned. Even the time calculated for leisure. But leisure comes at a price. Millions abstain from eating that day. Reason could be their own. Mine was to celebrate. I had already spoken to Pandit Ji, I will be spending the night at the temple and hence I was taking the day lightly. I ate Moong Halwa, whatever was left of it. And stepped out for a stroll outside, to see the clouds, to breathe a few times deeply. To spread se beans and chapatis for birds and a ferocious black dog with whom I shared a biscuit and since then we were best of friends. Nearby I found a trail and was looking for the stream following its sound, when a local woman standing on the roof of her home, located on the top of that cottage hill called me thrice in succession. She stood right up at an angle close to 90 degrees asked me again if she can come …

A Short Visit to the Museum Of Almora; An Introduction to the Life and Struggle of Govind Ballabh Pant

The Museum was empty. If I ignore one woman sitting, scrolling through her facebook on phone. There was no one and nothing but the fragrance of hanging dank wood welcomed me. A feeling which comes just before entering a wormhole. Or the back side of a cinema, closed long ago. As I put first few steps walking parallel to the blue wall looking at the old, outdated, never cared for large sized prints of venerable Temples and this city; nostalgia started to evoke silent, irrelevant screams out of those bare prints.

Following Vivekananda; and How one Home Found me in Kasar Devi- Almora

The fourteenth night of the waning moon each month is special. But in the month of Falgun i.e. March, this 14th night is said to have an upsurge of Prana/energy in one’s system (also if one could sit still throughout night) that which even pulled Swami Vivekananda more than 130 years ago to this small little mountainous region called Almora. But more precisely to a place on the top of the Kashyapa hill known as Kasar Devi. A place or the temple structure dating back to 2nd century CE.