Terraces of Life
India: C.P. Art Centre: Smt. Alarmel Valli to inaugurate the Women’s Crafts Bazaar
India: Tamil Nadu: Madurai: Free skies for Meenakshi’s Parrots
This is one of a series of stories highlighting some of the remarkable achievements of the animal welfare movement in India.
The Meenakshi Temple at Madurai, in southern India, is one of the largest temples in the world. It is dedicated to the Goddess Meenakshi, a form of Parvati, who is the wife of Shiva. Her vahana, or symbol, is the parrot, and she is depicted holding a parrot on her finger.
The species of parrot she holds is the Indian Ring-necked Parakeet or Rose-ringed Parakeet, which is native to India.
In an online article from September 19, 2005, attributed to Mike Schindlinger, entitled “Free Sky for Meenakshi Temple Parrots,” it was reported that the temple birds were being freed, and in the future only one pair of parrots would be kept in the temple.
According to P. Bhaskaran, Executive Officer of the Temple, the birds were being freed in response to requests from animal welfare organizations like Blue Cross of India. Similar requests had been lodged by the Tamil Nadu Forestry Department.
Dr. Chinny Krishna, Chairman Emeritus of Blue Cross of India, recalls that there used to be around 600 parrots being kept in an aviary of the temple.
Surrounding shops sold parrots to pilgrims visiting the temple, who then donated them to the temple in honor of Meenakshi.
People generally had no idea that the parrots were captured from the wild, and that for every parrot that survived, eight or nine may have died during the process of capturing them, so it was a very cruel process, and a very poor way to honor the Goddess Meenakshi.
Dr. Krishna pointed out that, starting around a hundred years ago, each year, unfortunately, many thousands of parrots were donated to the temple, but only around 600 parrots were there in the aviary at any one time. Since parrots easily live for around 60 years, something was not right. Clearly, most of the parrots did not survive in a situation where their caregivers had not been trained in how to care for them. They suffered from neglect.
For around 30 years, Dr. Krishna, representing Blue Cross of India, had been writing to the temple authorities, asking them not to keep parrots and to refuse to accept donations of parrots to the temple.
At long last, the battle was won; living parrots are no longer sold in shops near the temple, and they are not donated to the temple.
Dr. Krishna noted that, unfortunately, when they were freed without being acclimatized or rehabilitated first, most of the parrots probably did not survive.
Whenever birds are released after being kept in captivity, they need to go through a process of rehabilitation undertaken by a qualified wildlife rehabilitator. In most cases where birds are born in captivity, they can never be released back to the wild, but there are exceptions. Only a wildlife rehabilitator is able to make this assessment, on a case by case basis.
The good news is that parrots no longer suffer being captured from the wild to be sold to pilgrims or being kept inappropriately in captivity at the temple in Madurai. The Goddess Meenakshi can feel a sense of joy that her beloved, beautiful birds are at last free to fly in the pure winds of heaven.
To read the article, “Free Sky for Meenakshi Temple Parrots, click here.”
http://www.freeparrots.net/article.php?story=20050919193358793
To visit the website of Blue Cross of India, click here.
Top photo: J.M.Garg / GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version… / Wikimedia Commons / Rose-ringed Parakeets
Second photo: Nireekshit /This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. / Wikimedia Commons / Rose-ringed Parakeets
© Sharon St Joan, 2014
A Little Spot of Red
India: Chennai: With the voice of an angel…
With the voice of an angel, the boy sang a song from the Tevarum, poems written many centuries ago by Tamil poet saints in south India—haunting evocative notes, rising to heaven. He sang at the conclusion of the puja (devotional service) done at the Grove school, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, for the senior students who were about to take their final exams, that they might be blessed with success.
An hour and a half earlier, the ceremony had started as five priests began the yagna, which means sacrifice or offering.
Viewing this from a western perspective, one might think, watching the puja, that this must be some sort of a traditional religious school—but nothing could be farther from the truth. The classes are all taught in English, and the curriculum is very modern and up-to-date.
The Grove School is an excellent school, one of the best in India, and it does a spectacular job of preparing students to take their place in the modern world. Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and though Indian culture and history form an important part of their studies, freedom of thought and religion is very much respected. The puja intrigued me as a visitor to India, for no other reason than that it is, if you like, a glimpse of India – where faith is not excluded. It is neither excluded, nor promoted. It simply is – as a part of life. Prayers are allowed in Indian schools, as they were in American schools when I was a child. They seem normal and natural, and there is absolutely nothing compulsory about them.
To exclude worship from Indian life would be like trying to banish water from the sea.
And also, I found the puja intriguing – more intriguing than a math class – which is the main reason I have chosen to write about it.
A beautiful fire burned during most of the puja. The flames, contained in a metal rectangle about three feet long, flickered, growing ever higher. Dressed in the traditional white dhoti, the priests sat on boards around the flames, chanting vedic hymns — songs of praise to deities — one was an invocation to Saraswati, the Goddess of learning and culture. The chants from the Rig Veda have been sung, exactly the same, for thousands of years.
As the priests sang, they put offerings into the fire – with a long wooden spoon a priest repeatedly poured ghee (clarified butter) into the flames. Others put in herbal leaves and twigs, and cubes of sugar. Two priest added twigs and sticks to the fire, which burned brighter and more intensely. Agni, the fire, is the God who carries prayers to heaven – who ultimately, over the course of time and at the end of time, carries all beings and all souls back to their origin.
Flowers, grasses, and fruit are the sacred gifts of nature that are offered to the Gods, and, just as rain and the sun have bestowed on plants life-giving energy, returning the fruits of the earth to the Gods reaffirms the unity of heaven and earth.
It is these age-old traditions, preserved and protected over thousands of years, that have given Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), the primary faith of India, the continuity and beauty carried through so many centuries that is as alive and vibrant today as ever in the past.
Beyond the fire, placed on a shrine, were bowls each holding a coconut, each coconut garlanded with flowers. There were twelve of these deities; nine represented the nine planets who influence the course of earthly lives.
Seated on the floor were around thirty students who would soon be taking their exams. Like nearly all Indian people, young or old, they seem to be able to sit easily and naturally in a yoga position for any length of time. For the first hour they were quiet. As the chanting went on for an hour and a half, they began to chat quietly among themselves, but never loudly or in an intrusive way.
The teachers, the principal, and school officials, sat on chairs around the sides of the room. Several times during the puja, everyone stood, as one of the priests walked by with a small fire. People put both hands toward the fire, then up to their faces, as a blessing. This is done in a similar way in every Hindu temple, whenever a puja is performed.
Bananas, apples, flowers, herbs, and grasses were the offerings on the shrine; the smoke rising from the fire was filled with sweet-smelling incense.
Through the open windows lining the hall, birds could be seen, flitting among the giant trees.
At the close of the puja, the students lined up to be given a thread, to be tied on their right wrist as a bracelet. Not all the students at Grove School are Hindu. Many are Muslims; a few are from other backgrounds. No student was required to attend the puja, but most of them did, whatever background they were from, because everyone can use an extra blessing before an important final exam. They were given a certificate too, and they left smiling, perhaps with a bit of extra confidence to carry along with them, which never hurts.
The puja brought an atmosphere of peace and reassurance. One could not help but feel the sense that one is part of the eternal Cosmos, accepted and guided through life.
© Text, Sharon St Joan, 2014
Top photo: Nvvchar / A puja taking place at the Gunjanarasimhaswamy Temple at T. Narasipur, a town near Mysore in South India.
Second photo: Courtesy of the C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar Foundation / The Grove School
Third photo: Flickr user © Claude Renault /A woman praying to Hanuman in the Madurai Meenakshi Temple.
C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre: Green Pilgrimage to Rameshwaram
Aquarius: A windy time of change
By Niamh Fodla
It’s the time of Aquarius, when the state of the whole world is a personal matter. When everyone’s problems are my problem and your problem. And when conformity becomes an ugly word. When we’re all willing to break form and break mold in order to go out and make sure that everything is fair, that everything is correct, and that goodness is prevailing not just at home – but everywhere and in all matters. It’s an active and interactive time during which we all may feel a little more assertive, a little more willing to do and say what we know should be done and said if we personally are going to help make the world a better place.
It’s a windy time of necessary change.
This is interesting. It was created by someone who believes that every time it’s played, the planet in a 22 mile radius around that person receives some healing. And that if everyone played it every day, we could heal the Earth. Is it true? I have no idea. But what a nice idea! Let’s hope it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IleTerc07Ns
A video for Aquarian thought (saving the world):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHRE10ZiYjM
Things do not change; we change.
– Henry David Thoreau
© Photos and text, 2014
Letter to help save 2,000 Mute Swans
The white moths of time
The white moths of time listen
To the silken threads of the moon.
Perhaps it is time, not the world,
That needs to end soon,
Where the mists of Scotland
Glisten
There is magic.
Where did Agni go when he left?
He fled far,
Across the hills,
Where, no one could tell,
And left the land bereft.
But he did not truly go,
And the moonlight
Falls
On the whole lake,
Dreamed in snow.
No one has gone, at all
Only the gray wraith of doom
Who cursed the morning
From the chill tomb.
No one has left.
The rain still
Drifts on the hill.
The eye
Of the seagull recalls
The face
Of sunshine, and the insistent roar
Of the seas that sing
On the shore,
Where the pipes of daybreak
Awaken
The sky.
Black cows stood
In the peace of the meadow,
While the calf trips gaily
Through the daffodils.
Plants grow —
Green, archaic fern.
The calico cat leaps into the valley of tulips.
The frog calls
The rain.
The horse of white mane
Is the moon who wanders.
The raven is the night,
One
Of the daughters
Of Shani,
Born of the cosmic
Egg, the feathers of the yew,
The elbows of the eon.
Owls live in the stones too,
And Europe’s
Neanderthal;
The rags of clouds, of cloth unfurled,
Fly, to where who can tell?
The ship slips
A silver oar
Into the river where sails the incarnate trout
Of golden gill.
By what temple did you used to stand,
With your bowl of wood?
Who lit the lamps for you
When the moon went out
And time fell?
Would the rain come again?
Broken branches
On the Great War’s trenches,
The snow was too heavy.
The dancing of branches,
The singing of the star,
Time to go west,
Fleet deer of spring,
Gone with the white-crowned sparrow.
In whose soul does the lily dwell?
Is the deer the eternal grace
Of the forest?
© Sharon St Joan, February, 2014
Photo: © Darius Baužys / Dreamstime.com
India: Tamil Nadu: Villupuram: Thiruvakkarai Fossil Wood Park
Reblogged from My Travelogue,
By Bhushavali
I’ve been to tree parks and I’ve been to national parks. But National Fossil Wood Park? Yup, there is one, and I recently ventured there.
Well, Thiruvakkarai houses two things. One, a temple, the Chandramouliswarar temple, and another, the Fossil Wood Park. This time I went to the park.
What exactly is a fossil wood park? Long, long ago, once a upon a time, about two million years ago, our great great grandparents, as stone age men, chopped wood. Wood means not branches and twigs, I’m talking about huge, wide, tree trunks! Some which were even 30meters long and 1.5 meters in diameter. I dunno what they used it for. But then, along the river, these tree trunks got buried in the course of time.
Over time, the organic matter inside them got replaced by silica and they got fossilized. They retained their color and shape and texture, but got rock solid! Some were very interesting. See the above photo. Doesn’t the texture look like the ‘Om’ symbol?
The best part is that you can still see the annular rings, the texture, colors of the layers, nodes, everything… It looks so much like wood, but feels like stone!
In technical terms, they are the Mio-Pliocene Sedimentary rocks. These rocks here are called Cuddalore sandstone formations. Around 200 such tree trunks have been found in this region in an area that covers 247 acres. All such fossil woods have been collected from various places in the surroundings and placed here in an open air museum kinda set up.
The European naturalist M. Sonneret was the first one to document the existence of such trees here in this region in 1781. Presently, this is maintained by GSI, the Geological Survey of India!
Think of it, it’s two million years ago. The trees that were there at that point of time may not even exist today. It’s like a treasury! A particular variety of tree resembled today’s tamarind! Trees were of both Gymnosperm and Angiosperm varieties, meaning that the trees had seeds were of both open and closed varieties.
The place also has a huge central banyan tree which is 300 years old. No, it was not as big as the Sivaranthagam banyan.
But this one too had a little village deity beneath it and some votive figures of horses dedicated to it as well! Also there is a little inhouse gallery that has posters that explain to you all about this natural occurrence!
To reach there is not very easy! The last leg of the journey was rather painful with a very bad road and non-working gps! But thank God for a very helpful local man who was taking his granddaughter on a walk, thanks to the cloudy weather, who actually knew exactly where the park was located. Also thanks to the GSI, from the main road, there were pointers placed approaching the location…
TO GET THERE:
From Pondicherry Railway Station: 28.5km on SH 203.
Its a road parallel to the Pondy -> Villupuram Road. Go straight for about 24 kilometers and then turn right. After 4 kilometers is the destination.
Just before reaching Thiruvakkarai village, a right turn leads to the fossil park. A left turn, a hike up the hill, takes you to the temple.
On Google Maps:
Dedicated to Venkat