A travel log for my journey to 10 Jyotir Lingums throughout south and central India, November-December 2002 with my yoga group, Dhyanyoga Centers.

 
For my fiber arts/spinning galpals (and guypals)...

Today we got what seemed like a foot of snow in the Charlotte, NC area. In the South, most everything closes due to snow, including the library where I work, because there is no decent snow removal equipment. So I had some extra time today to think about what pictures I wanted to put up next.

The following pictures are from a cottage industry shop in Aurangabad, India. They had some looms in the front room of this establishment, so they could show us the unquestionable amount of work that goes into some of the textiles they make, particularly the panthani silk sarees.


All the looms had projects in-process on them.


While the looms might have looked ancient, fiber art-heads know that the process has gone essentially unchanged for centuries.


Aren't these colors vibrant?!


A panthani silk saree in process. As I recall these take over one month to weave, and cost several hundred dollars, even by Indian standards.


As some of you will notice immediately, these are quill spinning wheels, evidentally made from bicycle tires, for spinning fine silk. I know at least one member of my spinning guild that has been ingenious enough to make something like this herself!


posted by Lydia at 3:27 PM

 
More Mahadeva

You all might recall that my 3rd entry in the EVERYMAN contest was this architectural image.



A good friend of mine asked me to tell him more about "Mahadeva", which prompted me to think about exactly where I was at the time I took it. Sometimes all the images, especially the architectural ones, run together in my mind. MAHA-DEVA means great god, and is a popular name of Lord Shiva. The images I want to show you now are specifically from the Nageshwar Jyotir Lingum temple. Even I just went back into my weblog archive here to remind myself of what I wrote about this place on 12/10.

Nageshwar translated means "Lord of the Snakes." As I understand it, though, snakes are not negative in Hinduism. Rather snakes are often a representation of the subtle flow of energy in the human body, particularly up the spine, along the energy paths in yoga called the Ida, Pingala, and the Shushumna.

Let me take you into the temple:


Entrance: notice the colorful paintings of the Sun and the Moon on either side of the entrance.


An imperfect and accidental panoramic view of the full temple structure.


As you walk around the back of the temple, you cannot help but notice the magnificent scultpures of the gods that adorn this structure, bringing the Divine into our very presence.


All the details are animated and life-like. I love these elephants!


There is nowhere that the gods are not!


My personal favorite in terms of the structural images of Nageshwar.


The contrast between the top section and the bottom is overwhelming. I need to research the reason for this.

 

Shopping for religious paraphinalia outside the temples was irresistable.


Besides pictures of children, I also like to take pictures of doorways. I loved the subtle colors here.

I hope you enjoyed your virtual tour of Nageshwar. Please join me again in the near future for another temple tour.


posted by Lydia at 7:20 PM

 
Only which I had shot more film...

OK: I am a sucker for taking pictures of Indian children, and I probably even lean, in general, more toward taking pictures of the girls, because they are so attractive. While my other photo was the winner for the EVERYMAN contest, that does not change the fact that I really love other pictures, including


Goddesses at Play

Here was another situation, where I just wished I had had more film. I was at the end of a roll. The group's buses were parked outside a girl's school. We were waiting for people to trickle back to the bus from shopping around the temple. I wandered over to the gates of the school to take a look around.

The sign on the school read "Nutan Tryambak Vidalaya." If anyone out there can translate into english for me, please email me! I would love to somehow get this picture, along with the additional ones here that I want to show you, to these lovely young women, or at least their school teachers.







Tryambekeshwar holds nice memories for me, overall. Since I have been talking about the temples, but not really SHOWING you their awesomeness, even just in terms of their history and architecture, I wanted to include a couple pictures of the Tryambekeshwar Jyotir Lingum temple.

Jyotir loosely means "light" and Lingum is a cosmic egg-shaped representation of Shiva, one of the three main aspects of the Divine in Hinduism, often associated with dissolution or destruction, but not desctruction in a necessarily negative sense--more like what needs to take place before renewal or rebirth.

I would have liked to be able to show you what I saw inside, but this was one of those temples were no one could take pictures inside. As a matter of fact, if I recall correctly, this was one where women could not directly do puja (i.e. ritual worship) to the lingum.

Here is a couple outside shots of the temple, though:





More soon!



posted by Lydia at 7:50 AM

 
Contest results!

Hey everyone! I was awarded 2nd place in the The Second Annual EVERYMAN Photo Contest with


Through my Lens

Thanks SO much Troy!

I knew "Through my Lens" was a keeper as soon as I pulled it out of the developing envelop. Of course I remember the situation, on a beach of the Narmada River in Nikora India, but I don't actually remember taking the shot. The kids were jumping all around me, waving their hands, and I just started shooting like crazy. I was loosing the late afternoon light, and many of the shots were not in focus. However seeing more shots from those moments might give you an additional feel for what it was like. Here are some of them.











By this point, the kids were starting to ask for "BAKSHEESH!" (money).


posted by Lydia at 5:11 AM

 
A Lavendar & Pink Seraph

Some of you may remember tales from my shopping trips in India, including a post on 12/10/02 where I mentioned finding a lavendar and pink saree for my galpal Kris. Well, this weekend at the Atlantian 12th Night SCA event, Kris got to wear her saree and taylor made cholee top for the first time. This was her first time ever in a saree, and she looked DIVINE!



I have to admit that I felt very lovely in my silk saree, as well. I have had my red saree for a number of years, but don't have much occassion to wear it.



My boyfriend, Kevin, was an excellent sport, and let me dress him up in a men's punjabi suit. RED is my favorite color!


posted by Lydia at 8:27 PM

 
Still excited about my India Photography

First and foremost, I want to praise Camera World for the job they did on my 28 rolls of film from India. I would only say that there was one roll that I botched with a huge honkin' hair on the camera lens (the hair was dark, so I know it was not on the negative).

I have been giving it a lot of thought, and I think I am going to organize my India photos by subjects like "Up Close and Personal" (for people shots), "Architectural Awe," "Streetlife," "Jyotir Lingums," "Group Members," etc. You get the idea. I want to make the groups as meaningful for as broad an audience as possible. Just organizing the shots by date probably is not going to cut it (although I could have a "By Date" category as well, eventually).

I did enter the following pictures into the The EVERYMAN Photo Contest:


Through my Lens


Goddesses at Play


Mahadeva

Wish me luck!


posted by Lydia at 7:22 PM

 
Greetings friends!

Unfortunately the good health I experienced in India kind of collapsed on me right after Christmas. I attribute most of my problems to being on anti-biotics for an extended period of time. The old body just can't handle that anymore!

I took a few of my rolls of film in for processing. Qualex unapologetically sliced up some of my negatives, so keep THAT in mind when choosing your place of photo-finishing! They claimed that they did not guarentee any print past #24. I used to work in a photo lab in a previous life, AND I could see the complete negative on my mini-contact sheet, so you all can imagine how rotten that explanation smelled to me!

In any case, I wanted to start to show you some pictures. These were taken on the last leg of my trip, at the Shri Anandi Ma Ashram in Nikora. Being at this lovely place is still rather fresh in my mind.


Ashram festively lit. I don't know if they leave the lights up year long, but I suspect they were up for Diwali, and they left them up to welcome the Americans. The Indian devotees take immaculate care of this place. I consider it my home in India.


Upstream, north view of the Narmada River, India's 2nd most holy river.


Downstream, south view of the Narmada River, headed toward the Arabian Sea.


Most cows in India are rather docile, but NOT this mother cow with her day-old calf. Can you see the fire in her eyes?!


Cotton fields on the ashram property. In print, this has been one of my favorite pictures so far.


Something is always in bloom in this part of the world.

I took 3 rolls of color 120 film into Camera World in Charlotte the other day, and hope to pick them up tomorrow. They were rated the best in the city by Creative Loafing, and a gal I work with highly recommended them, so I will give you a report soon on those pictures. I hope to start developing my black-n-white negative very soon.

More soon!
posted by Lydia at 10:05 AM