Pilgrim Shivam

Everytime when a place is glorified by the grand presence of the Divine, the surroundings become more and more dull, nasty and hypocrite. It's a cosmic trick, that has been distracting people for ages, from reaching to the core of a truth. That is why, when we visit any place of great religious importance we find ourselves stuck in some stupid situations around. Most of us step on that Cosmic-trap and become a Cosmic Joke ourselves. The Kalyaneswari Temple of Asansol has no exception to this. -- "It was a time, when the surroundings of this temple was crystal clear." -- "You see that stream? It had more turbulence last time we visited." -- "Kalyaneswari? We went there on a picnic season. It is too crowdy, man!!"  And so on. But there is much more than these general assumptions of the common people regarding this great SiddhapeeTha. This old temple is just like a black-hole -- a darkness, covered with darkness. An ever flowing mystery waiting to be rev...

I have heard the roar of seas, the depth of the forests, the breeze of the hills. I became silent in front of midnight and listened to its meditation; I remember the symphony of the dry leaves of a lonely roadside jungle and the burble of a river flow, which sounded like the anklets of a dancing little girl. I roamed within the lap of the Nature and emerged within its sounds. And then there was the Daxong Falls, who compiled all of these sounds in such a manner that it created a vibrant melody. After reaching there we needed to go down, way down to experience Him. As we were going down the stairs and reaching for the falls, I felt a gradual loss of my egos. It was good actually. A sincere Pranati is always better than a fake humility. Finally I was standing in front of it, where the Kanchi River jumped off a 144ft high cliff. I was facing another raw and glorious face of Mother Nature. Though it looked like a falls, it seemed something else to me at first. The Kanchi was jum...

It was a March and we had to march to a waterfall to collect its water for Basanti Puja. For the first time in life I got the opportunity to perform the complete Basanti Puja of my own and all I wanted is to be just perfect in every aspects as much as possible. That’s a separate story though it gave me many chances to do crazy things such as going into the wild in search of wild boars, visit bullfights and much. One of these was my trip to Daxong Falls. I needed the falls water for Devi’s Ashtakalas Mahasnan and was thinking to visit a fall nearby. At this time Firoz Bhai showed me up some of the snaps of Daxong as he recently visited there. Instantly we made up a plan and on a fine weekday, when both of my parents were busy with their works we set our path to the Daxong Falls. The word Daxong means the act of pouring water. It was spring and on our way we experienced another beautiful face of my hometown Purulia. On both sides of the roads the dry earth was decor...

Kolkata; a city of joy, music and much more. But for me always it has been a city of crowds of confused people. As I am not a Kolkatian, I never think about it but nature always makes me visit that city. Unavoidable situations often arise, and all I need to do is to visit that city. Whenever I get to visit Kolkata, I always try to do something apart from my work, that really worthy of facing Kolkata, specifically its crowd. Such thing I had to do yesterday. I decided to visit Adyapeetha Devi Temple. And there I felt something so un-Kolkatic in the middle of Kolkata. From my very childhood I have seen Her portrait almost daily at home. Her “AdyaStotram” is very famous to us all. So when I finally decided to visit the temple, I was obviously excited. But all of my excitement was doomed by a terrible headache. A long night-bus journey from Purulia to Kolkata and some rushes of the work, I had there gave me a tremendous headache. I was feeling so unwell that sometimes I decided to ...

Most of the time when I visit ancient temples, I explore darkness. Rarely, I found radiant glow or heavenly light, like at Khero Pahar. Except that one I always entered into a domain of darkness, whenever I visited old temples and found myself dissolved in those black-holes. The Kalyaneswari Temple of Lepodi is no exception. We decided to visit the temple, as soon as we heard about it. We knew about the Kalyaneswari temple of Mython. We visited the place, searched its history and concluded for the time. But we didn’t know that there are more in the chain. So we set our path towards Lepodi village. It was not too far from my hometown Purulia. We had to move towards the road to Maanbazar. As we had been to the Mython Kalyaneswari Temple, in sub-conscious we expected some resemblance. But when we finally visited, we were like, ‘huh ? ! ! !’. the Shadowy Temple It was really a typical Purulia day for all of us. The Sun was showing no mercy on us and in that mid-monsoon da...

Y ou have been to Digha, right? Do you remember that white colored Shiva temple named Chandaneswara? It is not exactly Digha, little outskirts. But still, have you been there? Do you remember it? A big temple complex with various Hindu deities, right? I visited the place too. But what I have found there made me amazed, silent. Care for a guided tour to the definition of Belief?  The Entrance It was the time of Gajan Fair. People of Bengal are well aware of what craziness one gets to experience in those fairs. One could see people with insatiable desire to showcase their desperate devotion to Lord Shiva in those fairs. People hurt themselves brutally, to engage their minds to the Lord of the beings. We arrived at Chandaneswara Temple at that very peak time of the Gajan fair.   We were ready to see the people with devout scars on their bodies. But when we reached we saw something different. We expected a thunder storm and got a gentle rain, which made our minds drenc...