“Bal Gopal”
Here is the photograph of another sample of my creativity while I was in Guwahati. This one is a glass painting of “Bal Gopal”.
Why another Krishna? Well, “Dwarkadeesh-ji” happens to be our family/ancestral deity. We even have our own temple in Kanpur, which was built by my great-great-great-grandfather. As the legend goes, he was apparently “given instructions in his dream” to go and look for the idol at a particular place, and then build a temple and “establish” it there!
This is one temple that I have always loved visiting, although I’m an extremely nonreligious person as a general rule! The reason is that this is one temple which, no matter what time of the day you visit it, you’ll find it perfectly clean! And the “prasadam” which is served to the deity is just yummy!
(Oh btw, unlike other Gods and Goddesses, there are apparently no restrictions on what to serve as “Prasad” to Dwarkadeesh-ji. Whatever we have for b’fast/lunch/dinner, the same is served to the God as well!)
We also have our family tree in that temple, and all records of births, deaths and marriages in our family can be found there at any time. Of course, this data is only available to the members of the family though!
(Btw, this temple is not to be confused with the famous “J.K. Temple” (also in Kanpur), which was built by a different branch of my ancestors.)
So there… if you ever happen to be in Kanpur at the time of Janmashtmi, let me know… and I’ll give you the address of this temple. You don’t want to miss the “Jhaanki” they set up in the temple at that time!
Coming back to the painting now - well, I might not be a very religious person, but, the rest of my family sure is! And my Chacha-Chachi can be thought of as the religious leaders of the entire “Kutumb”! Hence, I made another “Lord Krishna” for them!
There wasn’t enough time to get it framed, so we simply spread a white cloth under the glass and took the photograph.
And in return for these 2 paintings, my Chacha-Chachi gifted me a copy of the “BhagvadGita - As It Is”.
I have been thinking of getting myself a copy for several months now… been wanting to read for myself what is it all about, because I’ve heard so much about it… but there are so many different translations available in the market today, that I just couldn’t figure out which one would give me an un-biased translation of the Sanskrit literature.
The one that my Chacha-Chachi gifted to me has the original Sanskrit Shlokas, as well as the direct meanings of the Sanskrit words… and after that, it contains the translation of the Shlokas in English. The author’s understanding of the Shlokas, with reference to other Vedic texts, is given separately… so I don’t necessarily have to read it if I don’t want to!
I haven’t yet completed it, but, from whatever I have read of it till now, I will highly recommend it to anyone who has a logical bent of mind, and has no qualms in questioning the senseless religious dogmas that are being practiced today!
