It was 15th April’ 2012 (Sunday), when we boarded into the train DIGHA – PURI Express, we mean I and my parents. It was all pre-decided. And that was my first outing or vacation spending outside home with my parents.
Actually the situation is quiet different now, after my younger brother passed away (last year in October month) my parents have become tremendously sad (obviously any parent will be) and I wanted to make them happy and bring the smile back on their face again although I knew that it was a difficult task for me, but ultimately, no one can do that except me as I am the very nearest to them than anyone in life.
So I decided to take them to PURI, which is much popular place for spiritual tourism. PURI has a popular temple of Lord Vishnu as an Avatar called “Lord Jagannath”, hence the temple is called as “PURI – JAGANNATH TEMPLE”.
The deity gods are Lord Jagannath (Krishna), Lord Balaram (Brother of Krishna) and Subhadra (Sister of Krishna & Balaram). Here the fact is quiet different, the outer look of the above gods are different from other avatars. Here you can find the Gods have only half of their hands and eyes are round.
The story goes like this as it was shared by the Panda Madhusudan, who was in fact our guide as well as pujari in the temple (and was also well known to us from before itself)…..
There was a King who ruled Orissa State much earlier and was devotee of Lord Narayana. The king had much desire to meet his deity God, so he started praying to god by being in scared place for a long time. One fine day, God was pleased and appeared in front of him and asked him to demand for a wish. The king demanded to have his deity god in his palace forever, so that he can see his god and offer Puja as well on regular basis. God accepted king’s wish, but had given a condition that king had to make his idol as similar to the GOD himself, the only fact would be on the Puja time God himself will be turned from Idol to real (but on the right time), added to that God also said the idol must be made inside a closed temple with keys locked from outside for 21 days and no one should open the door till the creation getting over.
The king agreed and happily started working on his deity God’s instruction. An idol creator (Karigar in local language) was appointed and stated his work sincerely. After 14 days of work, the queen was in doubt whether the Karigar was alive or not since he had not taken any food at all since the first day he was locked inside the temple to make the idol, on being tensed she finally opened the door of the temple and found that God’s all the limbs were created perfectly except the hand which were made just half till elbow level.
Yes, that was it. As per the conditions given by God, further creation to completion did not happen at all and the god remained like that.
The Pujari took us in and around the temple and explained us about the story behind each of the temple, sculptures and Gods. The temple has four main gates, out of which East Gate and South Gate are the biggest and more traffic oriented gates. We have seen God’s Bhog making area with 56 different Bhogs (Bhogs are the Prasadam offered to GOD)
(Photographs are taken from Google.com as it was not allowed to take pictures inside the temple)
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