Thursday Hops #18

What with the Diwali festivities and tackling the work piled up afterwards, I missed posting Thursday Hops last week. So this week I’m playing catch up and posting what I ought to have posted last week.

Today’s post is about my Puja corner, which was hastily put together last year when my mom was visiting.

I’d been an atheist most of my life (secret for being one revealed here); now I’m neither a complete atheist nor a complete daily-worshipping believer. I believe God is a natural sum of the goodness in all our hearts and out there some where, but I don’t see any point in putting up a specific shelf, corner, or Mandir for worship.

If God is everywhere and within us, why do we need to fold our hand is front of a specific corner? Anyways, my mom obviously does not subscribe to my views and she has been in a habit of lighting the lamp every evening for most of her life. So we put together this shelf with all our ‘Godly’ belongings.

As you can see, this is not a typical Puja shelf. I have Laughing Budha idols mixed in with a Ganesha hanging and none of the traditional Krishna, Shiva, Laxmi idols. I have a beautiful Budha figurine as well but that is placed in another place in the house so it was not captured in this pic.

I do plan on getting, or preferably making, a Krishna or Shiva painting. I’m quite impressed with some aspects of their stories and would love to make something depicting those aspects.

To round up the post, here is a pic of the entry corridor to my house. Mine is the door to the left. I had spray painted the door in Chrome just the day before to sort of match the stainless steel of my neighbor’s door. Not a very professional finish but at least it is no longer the ugly, rusty, primer-brown that it was earlier.

Our neighbor’s were away for Diwali so I lit a lamp in their corner as well.

Published by Leena T Pandey

I have been reading voraciously since the age of five when I first discovered the joys of reading. I would lap up anything in print. Unrolling an emptied newspaper cone with one hand, stuffing roasted peanuts in my mouth with the other, all the while devouring the printed content on the cone with my eyes, was one of my first experiences in hedonistic pleasure. In fact, sometimes I feel that I am on an adventurous journey through the secret dreamworld of other people's imaginations, interspersed with occasional visits to my own life to attend events like graduation, first job, marriage, and so on. As a true-blue reader, I think I am uniquely qualified to comment on and critique other people's works of labour. I can tell exactly what puts the average reader to sleep, what sets their pulse racing, and what has them salivating for more. Write to me at leenatpandey@gmail.com. View more posts