Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Kapaleeswarar Temple Festival

The Kapaleeswarar temple car at the `Arubathimoovar Thiruvizha.' I managed to visit the festival only on the day of the temple car procession. (Check out some of the previous years' pics under the same labels.) The first is a wide angle shot of the temple car with the crowd.

A devotee offers a prayer. You can see many doing this, each an island of concentration in the hurry and crush of the crowd.
Hands go up in prayer, others applaud, the crowd screams `Kapali, Kapali' as the car starts moving.
A close up view of the temple car a representation of a horse drawn chariot driven by `Brahma' the creator. I wanted to crop out the name board of the Internet cafe in the background, but let it be - some vague notion of Chennai being a mix of the modern and traditional.
The ornamentation at the rear of the temple car.

4 comments:

Just.Cliking said...

Hi Balaji,

Wonderful photos. Specially love the dwarapalakars photo. You know when ever i visit the temple i give special attention to them and spend some time with them.

R. Balaji said...

Thank You, Sathiyan.

Anonymous said...

Long ago and far away again- excellent arupathumoovar photos- the 2 photos of the chariot- one rounding a corner and the other frontal view before the juxtaposed internet cafe one- are they on east mada street?- I could not see them being anywhere else, but then landmarks are no longer clearly distinguishable, at least to me. The corner seems to be the one near Kalathy store- am i right? Those wheels reminded me of the etymology of the word "juggernaut". Thanks for the pics-excellent work!

R. Balaji said...

Hi Anon, thank you.
Yes, it is the East Mada Street corner.