Different Gods
O ver the past year my job has taken me through the length and breadth of Vellore and Thiruvanamalai districts of Tamil Nadu. What kept fascinating me were the village temples and enormous statues in their outskirts. Being city born and bred, the temples I have been to were invariably the ones which housed one of the three pantheons of orthodox Hindu faith. They would be a Shiva, Krishna ,Vishnu or of their consorts. Without exception they were run by Brahmin priests. On one of my trips I saw this statue. It was kept outside of a small temple. Not much attention seemed to have been paid to it’s upkeep.At that time I could not elicit any answers from any of the locals I asked. Subsequently I saw at least 3 of the same kinds of headless images on the outskirts of different villages. When I again pressed the locals, the answers were very ambiguous . Most of them liked to believe the tale that if the head was put back on, the sta...