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-published in The Hindu dated 2nd August 2018
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| The Junagarh Fort - Bikaner |
Tucked away in a small dusty town in Deshnoke near Bikaner
of Rajasthan is the temple of Karni Mata Devi.
This is no ordinary temple – it is a temple where rats rule the roost
and is thus aptly called the Temple of Rats.
When we embarked on a road-trip in Rajasthan, we started
from Jaipur in the east and drove across to Jaisalmer in the west.
En-route, about 350 kms from Jaipur, we
decided to stop over at Bikaner, in the north-west part of Rajasthan, a city which
is known across India for its popular snack - the Bikaneri Bhujia.
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| Anup Mahal |
Bikaner owes its formation to Rao Bika, a
fierce Rajput warrior and son of Maharaja Rao Jodha of
Jodhpur.
Rao Bika named
his kingdom after himself as Bikaner and ruled it in the late 15
th
century.
The city boasts of a massive
fort built using red sand stone, called the Junagarh Fort.
This was built almost a century after Rao Bika
and several other kings who followed later added more embellishments, leaving
their names enshrined in the history of the fort. The interiors of the palace
within the fort are architectural marvels – comprising of the Baadal Mahal
where the walls and ceiling are patterned like blue clouds, the Anup Mahal that
has beautiful pillars and arches sculpted with ornate filigree work in a golden
hue,, the open courtyards with white marble floors and the arches inlaid with
delicate designs, the highly impressive Durbar Hall that was used by the kings
to meet officials and royal dignitaries during formal functions.
Every
ceiling, wall, arch and doorway inside the fort leaves a lasting impression of
architectural beauty, elegance and artistic creativity.
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| Baadal Mahal |
The city of Bikaner also boasts of another beautiful palace called
the Lalgarh Palace that was built by Maharaja Ganga Singh in the late 19
th
century.
This palace is also the
residence of the current royal family. A part of it has been converted into a
heritage hotel called Laxmi Niwas Palace.
The neatly manicured lawns, the vast expansive grounds, the red
sand-stone construction, the pretty little arched towers, the perfectly aligned
geometrical
symmetry of the building–
all these and more make the palace a stunningly beautiful one.
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| Entrance to the Karni Mata Temple |
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| Rats feeding on milk |
From Bikaner, we drove the short distance to Deshnoke to
visit the Karni Mata Temple.
From the
outside, it looked like any other temple, built of white marble with a huge
silver door at the entrance. But as we stood in line to enter the temple doors,
we were in for a big surprise.
We found
plenty of rats – of different sizes and in different shades of grey.
There were more than half a dozen of them
sitting on the ledge of the door.
Once
we got over our initial surprise, we looked around and spotted several more
peeping out of a small crevice in the wall.
And then when we daintily walked over the temple threshold, there were
plenty of them scampering around all over the black-and-white tiled temple
floor.
We saw a good number of rats gathered
neatly around a huge plate of milk and drinking the ‘
prasad.’
It was a remarkable
sight!
There were rats in every nook
and corner and some inside the sanctum sanctorum too.
We learnt later that Karni Mata was revered
as an incarnation of Goddess Durga.
The
locals believed that the rats were actually her devotees, who after their death
were reborn as rats.
That was the main
reason they enjoyed total freedom within the temple.
Another folk lore mentioned that when Karni
Mata’s son died, she prayed to Lord Yama, the God of Death, to let him go.
Yama relented but said her son would become a
rat.
Thus after that, all her children
were born as rats and could freely move around in the temple.
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| Inside the Sanctum sanctorum |
In fact, if any
visitor to the temple stepped on any rat or killed even one of them
accidentally, he had to pay a big price for the vile deed.
The visitor had to get a rat sculpted in
silver and donate it to the temple!
We carefully walked around the temple, making sure that we
did not trample any rat – that was one unforgettable, if a little creepy,
temple experience!
