The most visited place in my area is empty today

Tomorrow is Kartik Purnima on which this holy month ends. The Dhabaleswar Temple at my village is the most visited place in the entire area within a 30 km radius - the Lord Shiva temple is famous in our locality. There is one other Dhabaleswar Temple at Cuttack, but people from my nearby areas prefer to come here. Every year, a two day festival happens here on the occasion of Bada Osha (ବଡ଼ ଓଷା) and Kartik Purnima. Bada Osha means the biggest festival of fasting - people believe that any desire gets fulfilled if they do this fasting very committed and come to seek the blessings of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati (wife of Lord Shiva) . Almost more than 50000 people visit on each day, on this two day festival. Unfortunately, since last year, this is stopped due to Covid.

I have been to this temple since three decades and have many memories with this particular festival. When we were young, we served as volunteers for these two days festival. The temple did not have lot of funds, so we used to collect only 50 paisa from each devotee to do the puja inside the temple. That was in nineties. We would get up at 2'o clock in the morning (or night you can say) and take bathe, wear washed dresses and go there and start preparation before the devotees come. There would be small books of tokens ( printing 50 paisa), and each volunteer would be given those and assigned an entry point as it has several entries. Others would be making sure, the people come in queues through the bamboo barricades that we make the previous day. At the end of the day, the calculations happens giving the funds to the temple committee. If I vaguely remember, then at that time, we used to collect around 15 - 20 thousand rupees. So that must be around 50000 people at that time. Most of the people used to come using bicycles - so one of our other team would create a stand and collect money to safeguard them. That money was ours and we used to fund that for our sports / other activities. Enjoying times - the happiness without having a lot of money is a life time memory. Some restaurant owners even used to bring snacks / sweets and give it to us for free, seeing our work. Standing the entire day ( more than 15 hrs) was not feeling painful.

A lot has changed since then, the place has been made beautiful with lot of improvements. We did a mini get together at this temple in August about which I posted here and I can say its an amazing place now. If you come for the first time, you will feel like never going back. And you can even arrange group lunches here like we did - it will be a unique experience.

You can see the huge nature of the bull called Nandi - a whole story on this link. The pandal in the middle of the pond serves the purpose of cultural events - some devotional musical events are organized frequently and the crowd can watch from the littoral zone. You can imagine the ambience that soothes the mind. Overall, if you stand on this pandal street , you will see the beauty all around - the scenic serenity of the place is a perfect gift for one's peace of mind.

When I went there today, I was saddened to see people coming from very distant place and being disappointed not to enter inside. The local administration has declared 144 and banned entry to the area itself. I am not sure, if they declared it in the nearby areas or not, but I saw people coming from very distant places to only discover that the temple is closed.

Met this lady, who told she cannot see properly and come from a village which is 12 km from the temple. She does not know her age as well and she thinks, she should seek the blessings because she may not be there next year. The lady accompanying her must be her daughter or daughter-in-law and seems to be a bit knowledgeable. She was saying, if people can meet in Parliament, they why they not allowed to go inside the temple. There are many places where mass is allowed so why them !!!

This post will be submitted as part of my Google Review , Google says it has got 25,813 new views on my photos / reviews in October itself, so hopefully it will help some land on #HIVE. I encourage everyone in this community to do the same - after all we are the HIVE marketing.