Old Idol vs The New: The Shiv Dham Project

Shiv Dham Project hoarding outside the temple.

It was when the two beloved neighbors who exchanged delicacies during festivals and helped each other in making papads and mangodis—fought, every house in the locality knew that Shiv Dham Project is going to cost much more than the monetary value of three point twenty one lakhs. Saraswati Yadav and Laali Bai, residents of the Housing Board Colony moved to this locality around the same time in year 2006. Even though Mrs Yadav was fifteen years older than the latter, they shared a bond which only girls in college share. They ritually met in evening at Mrs Yadav’s house and chatted over a cup of tea about every human, every animal of the colony. The families mixed well. The friendship was converted into a relation when Laali Bai brought a rakhi for Saraswati announcing, “the sister I never had”. It was all good until Shiv Dham Project was announced. The project was a test and unlike any quintessential Bollywood movie on friendship, theirs crumbled under the pressure.

Core committee for the project was formed earlier this year comprising of Rupender Singh, Jitu Sen, Anil Kejriwal, Dharmendra Yadav, and Mahesh Sharma – all residents of the Housing Board Colony. In its first meeting, the committee decided that the temple’s outermost fencing should no longer be an invisibly acknowledged one but be constructed with solid barbed wires. Everyone seemed to have agreed but Laali Bai. Her house was right next to the temple’s outer fencing. For years she had been “wrongfully” using the temple’s land for her own personal needs. So when the committee came up with the decision of fencing the temple to stop pigs and cows from entering the space, Laali Bai did everything to prevent it from happening. She threatened to call the lawyers, her thug brothers from the village but everything went in vain. Saraswati Yadav, the unannounced member of the all-male committee, took her friendship on bullet and fired abuses. Laali Devi shrunk back and so did their companionship.

“What is wrong, is wrong. Even he (Lord Shiva) knows it”, said Mrs Yadav when I asked her about the tiff. Her daughter-in-law, who wasn’t even a part of the fight had an opinion to offer, “Who has flourished after stealing what is god’s?”

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Land acquisition has been at the center of Mansha Purna Mahadev (Wish-granting Lord) temple and it goes back to 1980s. Mrs Sarita Runwal, resident house number 10, shifted to this locality in October 1985 on the pious occasion of Dhanteras. One morning, while sitting in her garden, reading Dainik Navjyoti, a Hindi newspaper daily, she agreed to tell me the history of this colony. “It was a jungle with a handful of houses when we shifted”, she began.

Mrs Sarita Runwal

Housing Board Colony is separated by a distance of twenty kilometers from the Old Kishangarh City which was founded by the Rathore price, Kishan Singh ji of Jodhpur in 1609. Kishangarh was the capital of the princely state during the British Raj, which was located in the Rajputana Agency.

“People talked of Housing Board as a far-off place –  a different city when I was married here in 1995”, says Durgesh Yadav, who used to live in the main city until 2006, when she moved here with the family.

Mrs Runwal goes on to say, “Back in eighties, there were neither roads nor street lights. You could hear wild animals howling at night.” She took a brief pause, as if trying to recollect and continued, “This on time, when Deepak’s father, my husband was not home, a leopard entered the locality. I was alone at home with the kids. We all were terrified. No body opened the gates of their houses. There were no telephones in those days to call for help.” I could see the fear afresh, even after all those years. “I sat in front of pooja-ghar and prayed for our lives. The next day, when he (the husband) came, I made sure that our wooden door is replaced with that of an iron.”

Mrs Runwal lives in the same house with her two sons, daughters-in-laws and five grandchildren. She took a sip of her tea and pointed to a news bulletin in the newspaper and said, “Kishangarh is developing so fast. Look, an airport! It was a patch of jungle once.”

Portion of Housing Board Colony now (2018).

On being asked about the temple, she said that there was no place for communal worshipping when they moved here in 1985. A few years later, in the month of March, a clerk along with his attendant, illegally started acquiring the land at the bottom of the hill. “It was then Deepak ke papa felt that there had to be a temple in this locality. He didn’t let the duo reserve the land. He took a big cardboard which read, ‘mandir ka zameen’ (Temple’s property) and placed it at the top of the hill. People then spared it from occupying. In following years, he became the president of the colony’s welfare organization”, she said with a faint admiration for her husband who is now no more. Extending her admiration, she went on to tell how after becoming the president of the colony he got the lights and roads fixed, and managed to put a post-box.

“Finally who constructed this temple?”, I asked her.

She warmly pressed my shoulder and said, “It is never one person who constructs a temple, beta. Every one gave little money and it was after Holi that this temple was inaugurated.”

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Nobody remembers the first priest who was appointed for the Shiv Temple. But most of them remember one and nobody remembers him by his own name but as ‘Bhawani’s father’. Bhawani Shankar, a Brahamin by caste, was a friend of Mrs Runwal’s elder son, Deepak. “He studied Commerce in college, whereas I was in Sciences”, Deepak Runwal told me. Having the privilege of caste, he came to the temple for the morning and evening aartis to earn an extra pocket money for himself. He was a bhakt of Bhole Shankar—that’s how whole Housing Board Colony remembers him. But his wife, along with her lover murdered him in their own house. Rumor has it that he was strangled, while other ghastly stories run that he was cut into pieces and burnt on the terrace. Children still believe that Nidhi Cottage, which he named after his wife is haunted. Deepak Runwal, who was good friends with Bhawani Shankar remembers him as a bright student.

On probing Mr Deepak to tell more about the construction of the temple amidst the land acquisitions, I asked him if the government will declare this idol-installation as illegal? To this he said, “Aastha ke naam mai government kuch nahi kehti.” (Government does not interfere in the matters of faith). But the priest, who is currently employed at the temple, Pt. Yugal Kishore Sharma does not see this project just concerning faith. Mr Kishore has been in service of the temple since 2005, when another temple, dedicated to Lord Sai was constructed right beside Shiv’s. I went to the temple one morning to talk to him, disturbing his morning rituals of bathing and dressing the idols. He seemed interested to talk at first but the moment he saw a pen and a paper, he shrank back. He incessantly asked if this information will have a legal enquiry or not? After assuring him that there won’t be any, he stretched his legs and began to talk about the Shiv Dham Project.

Mr Kishore had opinions which were quite contrary to Mr Runwal’s. Unlike him, the priest believed that this project will become a good tourist spot for the city. “Darshanik Sthal”, as he calls. He briefed me about the developments taking place on the hill – the lights, beautiful flowers being planted and a waterfall (yes!). On being asked about the faith bit, he was not sure – and nodded his head and again began to tell how beautiful the idol of Shiva will look and attract the entire city. I prepared to ask another question when he announced that he has nothing more to answer and offered prasad of a banana in my hand. I touched the banana to my forehead, rang the temple bell and left.

The waterfall under construction.

Saraswati Yadav, resident of house number 12 showed the same level of excitement that the priest did. She pompously talked about it as Kishangarh’s first. Afterall, there’s a strange seduction about the firsts. Though Mrs Yadav is afraid that this spot which gives a stunning view of the entire Kishangarh city might attract rowdiness and eve-teasing. But the greatest fear that she has is that of it turning into a lover’s point. Mrs Yadav is infamously known for catching lovers meeting secretly in the temple. She has a strong suspicion for young boys and girls visiting temple at odd hours. She left my interview half-way thinking of the possible solutions to prevent this obscene culture from developing.

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The Shiv Dham Project promises a huge eleven foot Shiv idol, adorned with a beautiful waterfall by its side and a breathtaking pathway to the hill decked with flowers of all kinds. It seemed to have pleased everyone – except the children. While climbing the hill, I noticed a few children aged perhaps ten or eight, playing cricket on a newly constructed cemented floor behind the temple. The boy with the bat took the aim and the ball softly hit me. The group was petrified in a fear that I might not return the ball. They came together, hiding behind each other and waited for me to respond. I picked the ball and threw it in their direction with a smile.

I gestured the boy in white shirt who looked like the leader of the pack. His name was Sunil. I asked him whether they like playing on this with cemented floor. He faintly said, “yes”. But one of them, who was fielding in a corner said, “we miss crossing the hill to play in the expansive grounds of Raja Reddy.”

Raja Reddy is a kacchi basti or the colony of the nomads located right behind the hill. One can easily reach the basti by climbing the hill – which serves as a wall between permanent and the temporary.

“Then why don’t you go there anymore?”, I asked them.

They laughed at my cluelessness and said, “You don’t know? They’ve put barbed wires at the top of the hill to prevent pigs and dogs from entering the temple premises. Now we cannot jump the fencing.”

“Isn’t there any other way to go to those grounds?”

“Yes, there is but it takes a lot of time to reach and our mothers don’t allow us to take that route alone”, answered one of the kids.

“With the hill, it was safer”, concluded another.

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I nodded and started walking towards the top—the most talked about idol-installation project. The slope was steep yet I managed to climb the hill in seven minutes. At the eighth minute, I was standing right under the idol of Shiva. I was panting by the time I reached the top and wondered how the older generation is going to climb up here. To this, my grandfather, Mukut Yadav had an answer. He told that a motor has been installed beside the shivling in the temple which will transfer the offered water up to the waterfall. “In this way, old men like me could offer water to the idol of Shiva even while standing below”, he explained.

“It will restore both water and the faith of the devotees”, he finished with a satisfactory smile.

I looked around. It was so different. I remembered climbing up here as a teenager, wearing my blue sport shoes. But now I could climb even in my chappals. With a little change, so much has changed. I could no more sit on the rocks because they have been fenced with a hard metal wire. Everything was in control up there, yet so much had been lost. The overhead tanks on the hill were now no more overhead.

I looked at the grand idol of Shiva which was still under construction and spotted two moons—one in his bun and another in the blue sky. The sun was setting and so was the shift of the two sculptors who had been working on the idol for a month now. I chatted with the chief sculptor, Rama Krishan Kumawat for a while, who has been making idols since 1976. He briefed me about the dimensions of the idol which no more tickled my interest. His helper, who was a woman named Vishrami Rawat came and sat beside me. She closely observed me penning the conversation. She was impressed – her face did not lie.

She asked me in the local dialect, “Where do you study?”

“Dilli”, I replied.

She smiled. “Will you take my daughter with you? She is brilliant in studies.”

I could not find words to answer her request. Mr Kumawat intervened and began telling me about the raw materials used in making of the idol.

But I was distracted, disgusted by the artificiality of the place to an extent that I stopped listening to what he had to say. My pen stopped scribbling. I took a deep breath and asked him what I had been meaning to ask every interviewee but withheld.

“Do you think it is right to install an idol just like that? Wasn’t one idol enough? What pleasure will these people get from ruining this beautiful range of hills? Have you ever seen these hills turning into green during monsoon? You should see the peacocks dancing and the rainbow forming behind these hills. It is so beautiful when left on its own, then why destroy it by putting an idol?”

I finished my rant with moist eyes. I closed my notepad and prepared to leave. The old man smiled which annoyed me even more. He adjusted his glasses and said, “This idol will prevent the industrialists from digging the hills for stone and sand. Have you ever thought of this, beta?”

A destruction to escape another?

He was right.

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