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  ‘The Gallery of Upside Women’ - the title taken on from the legend of Karaikkal Ammaiyar's walk towards the Kailasapathi which we who grew up near Thiruvalangadu believe ended there. Nataraja performed Urdhva Thandava at the Ratna Sabha, and told Ammaiyar to go to Thiruvalangadu if she wanted to witness the rare dance. A modern, cosmopolitan poet, a spiritual practitioner and a researcher on lady bhakti poets was speaking about them at the book reading of the latest and the last of her trilogy.  A couple of things, very commonly found statements either touching on feminism, marginalization, emancipation etc., came up, naturally. The title of sainthood that adorned the bhaktas doesn't seem to go well either with the academicians or the city readers. Nor does the idea of saranagati (surrender or servility is the word used in general as the translation by those who think saranagati as regressive) seem to be acceptable.  Then came a question from my friend - “were the...

 The Kakatiya grandeur at Palampet, Telangana  In the book ‘Royal Patrons and Great Temple Art’, Shehbaz H. Safrani, author of the chapter on the Ramappa Temple in Telangana compares the patron of the temple General Recherla Rudra to Pericles for his statesmanship and also for his famous temple, the Parthenon. Across India there are scores of temples that have been built, endowed by queens, generals, traders, trade guilds etc., While one can think of local comparisons, to the Somanatha Dandanayaka a general of Hoysala king Narasimha III who built Somanathapura, a global comparison is beyond me. However, the size and effort of Pericles being compared to Recherla makes one sit up and take note of the size of the temple and tank he constructed and also his role and importance in the reign of an illustrious Kakatiya king Ganapatideva. While historians of the Marxist school or the post-modernist have not been kind to the kings and the temple builders, mostly attributing them to p...

Kulasekhara Perumal's lullaby to Ram Lalla  I was away enjoying Carnatic music in Chennai when the whole country was getting engaged with the details of the upcoming Ayodhya Ram Janmabhumi temple consecration. There was little time to look at news then, but once I returned, I could see lots of debates, especially in the Tamil country over our connections with Sri Rama. Luckily, with social media many scholars have started sharing diverse details, ranging from temples, literature, epigraphy etc., to show how deep our connections are. The last time, when the foundation stone laying ceremony happened, I blogged on one particular connection, the elaborate Ramayana dance drama of Sirgazhi Arunachala Kavi. I hope and pray some day like the Banaras Ram Lila, the Arunachala Kavi’s Rama Nataka will also be performed in Ayodhya. This time around, coming fresh from that immersive music season where we definitely hear, debate Rama kirtanais, kritis, my mind has been thinking of the temple cere...

  bahunam janmanam ante jnanavan mam prapadyate vasudevah sarvam iti sa mahatma su-durlabhah March 2020. Even as the first case of Covid-19 was finding its way to the front pages in India, we were travelling very close to where the first major outbreak was reported – Agra was not very far from Gwalior where we were. Our major focus of that photography tour was the Bateshwar group of temples. Since it had gained popularity with archaeologist Muhammad’s interviews and write-ups on its restoration, reconstruction efforts, and the striking, beautiful temple complex unlike any other in the country, photographers throng the site. As long as we were walking around the ruins my fellow travellers were fine. But our young driver was over enthusiastic about taking us to a very famous temple in the neighbourhood, where local pilgrims go in large numbers, the Shanichar temple near Morena. It is like many of the new temples in the North, no big plan, no architecture, no fineness. Our friends wer...