Hymns to the Mother Goddess

On the contract to the refined celebration the night before we decided to join the crowds storming Chattarpur, an area full of Hindu temples. A day before when refilling the water tank of the rooftop of our house I spotted the lights demarking domes of some temples in the Gurgaon direction and realized that Chattarpur must be a very happening and fascinating place to be at these days. So, the next night we were there to find out. The roads nearby were clattered with the stalls selling the attributes necessary for puja (religious ceremony)



and families walking towards the area from the main road. We joined the pilgrimage. Again, as opposed to the last night, we were clearly a token on this occasion: not-even- middle-class families were clearly unused to foreigners, so crowds around, excuse me mam and which country were ensured. While the whole area is full of temples





there were two major places of worship that night. One was an impressively illuminated statue of Hanuman





(with mostly men roaming around) – quite strange for the Mother Goddess celebrations but anyway… The other one was the main temple



looking as striking as formidable due to the insanely long queues of the believers craving to get in.



Without much hope, but rather out of the interest we asked a policeman where the queue starts. And … Mother Goddess was watching us, I bet.. he kindly brought us to the place where we could jump the queue. He entrusted us to a man who was watching some gate, who let us in and kept our shoes under his custody. That man entrusted us to a lady policeman who brought us further on where we could merge with the crowd already entering the temple. People in the queue were shouting verses praising the Goddess in the anxious anticipation to see her, bow to her and give her their donations.



There was only one way to go around the temple – following the one way passages and stopping by the chapels with the statues of the Goddess.







So we did and then reached a huge hall where professional singers were singing hymns for the greater glory of the Goddess and where people stopped by to listen, to clap and to sing along.



After we indulged the performance and the procession around the temple, we got back to pick up our shoes. Yet the doorkeeper strongly recommended us to visit the museum devoted to the Swami who established the temple. And once again a snowball started off – we were passed over from one person to another to avoid any queues. The temple looked even more striking after the visit but hardly any formidable.