Bad Choice

If you are wedded into a god-fearing-family, you need to take occasional pilgrimages to seek the blessings of the almighty. Hence..I had been on a rather long trip to two places in Karnataka - Narasimharajapur (N R Pura), Chickmagalur District; Humbuja - Shimoga District.

Now coming to the point..Humbuja (Humcha) is famous for Padmavathy Amman Jain temple. After a thrilling journey via forests, we were welcomed by a shrill voice - blaring prayers via the big speakers (I think, people know that gods are faraway and more the speakers you have, the more easier it is to connect with it/him/she ;-)

The temple presented a picture of utter negligence inspite of being able to pull good crowd. It was actually not a temple in the real sense..it looked like a big old fashioned bangalow. Even that was not maintained properly. After the customary pooja, we decided to venture out to the 1300 yr old pond/lake nearby. On the way, there was this splendid temple left to the ruins. It seems the original temple has been built centuries ago, later there is an addition of the roof structure. Lot of strikingly beautiful statues were lying around with no one to care for. It seems the temple is under the perview of ASI. I could not gather any information abt the history of the temple (some info was given in Kannada .though)The net says ..built between 8th - 11th century in the Chalukyan style.

But what a bad choice these devotees had made, they leave a beautiful temple to rot away and instead build a house-like temple and continue their worship.

Inspite of being a self-confessed atheist, I felt sorry for god!