The Parvati Temple
Looking for places to go in Pune I read about the Parvarti Temple. It is at least 300 years old and is on a really big hill in Pune. It is located on the extreme south of the map I gave in the earlier post ( across the river in the south).
As the driver took me there I saw we headed right through central Pune, the temple seems to be located in a more underdevloped part of town (you'd think it would bethe other way around). It's 108 Steps up to the temple, and people advised me not to do it mid-day.
But:
- I refuse to wake up at 7 in the morning on a weekend.
- I'm not so clear on where I am once it gets dark (and I'm even worse if the streetlights are out).
- It's not that much cooler in the morning, it's a 'mild' 75-80 degrees (F) by 9 A.M. anyway....I'm already sweating.
So I went at noon. 108 steps....at noon...
It heightens the religiosity of if if you feel like you're about to drop anyway.
they're actullay more like long platforms than stairs...
When you get to the enterance you have to take off your shoes and leave themat the shoe check. Some of the locals brought sandals with them...wish I'd thought of that. Why do the gods require no shoes but flip-flops are okay?
I alternated between burning my feet on the stones and destroying my socks.
The Entrance:
However outside the Parvati shrine there is a man constantly hosing down the steps. I don't know if it's a purificaton thing or just so you don't burn your feet.
You go inside and there's a building in the middle surrounded by 4 small towers.The central shrine is where Parvarti is. There is a 3 foot statue behind some gate in the middle. 
People come up and ring the bell ( to announce theier presense , curiously there is a similar bell in the local PizzaHut that people ring if the service was good), then bow and say prayers, put money in the coffer, sprinkle flower petals about... I didn't take a picute of the actual statues, because there were always people in front of them praying and such. Essentially the statues are 3-4 feet tall, Parvarti is depicted as a beutiful woman.
At the Parvati one were two women who were offering all kinds of things to the goddess ( flowers, fruits...etc), and they were'nt going anywhere anytime soon. Plus I don't think people would like it if you went into church and took picutes of them praying, so I stuck to the architecture, which is still pretty fantastic.
I paid a ruppee to go up on the balcony, which has a sign that says "Use balcony at your own risk". This is kind of another feature of the temple, every little room/shrine/balcony you want to go on has a price. There are coffers everywhere ( which is fine because the stuff is really nice and someone's got to preserve it)
The 'Sorry if I dishonor your culture' disclaimer:
I have no knowledge of Indian history,religion, or culture. I pick up things from tourbooks or signs, or what the guy at the temple manages to get out inEnglish. Heck, if it was printed on a placemat in English, I'd probably take that as fact too (Ganesh loves IHOP!). Also i seem to remember the odd details the most. Eventually I'll get a history book and looks this stuff up, for now it's fun for me to guess. Plus it's not like these folks don't take liberties...I made copies at the "Ganesh copy store" this morning, that's like having a "Jesus-FedEx-Kinkos" or something...
Peshwar muesem- There is a small museum on the temple grounds (you're not allowed to take pictures in there). And I learned some stuff today. Actually most of the plaques and captions were in hindi, so I didn't learn much at all. But here's what I surmised:
Local History (see disclaimer above): Pune was the capital of the Maharastrian state from sometime in the 16th-17thcentury, to the early 19th century. They had kings called 'peshwars'. The peshwars were apparently involved in alot of wars. Fighting with Portugese, Muslims...pretty much everyone who was'nt actually from india. I gathered that the paintings were mostly kings and generals, as many of them are displayed in battle. There was one picture of an elephant with a cannon on it's back, that's fairly terrifying. ( Or maybe they didn't have lots of wars, most of the stuff that gets preserved in most museums is from wars anyway...and no one writes books on the history of peacetime...boring).
So even though it's a Parvati temple all the other gods get in on the game as well. There is a large Vishnu shrine right next to the Parvarti one.
Vishnu (see disclaimer above): Vishnu is the preserver, he takes care of the universe before Shiva wipes it out. Once that's all done with Bhrama creates the universe again. I know he has incarnations:
- Rama (there's a whole saga and part of it involves an army of monkeys, I'll probably check that out)
- Buddha (they kinda did this to assimilate the buddhist population).
- Krishna ( I think, but I don't know much about him)
And a Ganesh one, but we'll get to that in a bit.
I was very careful to ask if I could take pictures and go in certain places.Offending the locals and/or bringing down the rath of their 800 gods was somethingI wanted to avoid .
