Destination No. 6 : Jejuri, Pune

Everyone worships God. Only a few don’t. But here, at this place, people worship god but in their own Desi Style. Jejuri, a place 200 km away from Mumbai, which will take around 4 hours of driving from Mumbai and is an hour’s drive from Pune.

The place is well known for its Temple “Khandoba”. Khandoba is regarded as the God of Jejuri. The temple is located in the Fort, which was built many years ago at a height of 2500 Feet. There are around 200 steps to climb up to reach the temple for visitors. The place is always populated with a good number of visitors every day and especially there’s a rush on the weekends. There are many villages situated in nearby Jejuri.I and my friend Bhavin went to one of those village to ask for shelter for just one night.

India is a melting pot of culture, where you’ll find unity in diversity. The cultures of different ethnic groups encourage different ways of worshipping and also poles apart Gods to worship. The most common way to devote to the Gods is to chant prayers and aartis, but the most effective way of praying, as believed by major gurus, is silence: Prayers is when we talk to God, meditation is when God responds.

Many scientist argue that the universe came into existence because of the Big Bang, and that the concept of “God” is made my humans, while on the other hand, popular religious saints believe that the universe and all that exists inside it, including the humans, is created with the power of The Almighty, The Superior; God.

However, I personally think that the Gods must be laughing when we put ourselves through so much of trouble to visit a temple when He has created an entire universe inside of us. Every individual has a whole living growing inside. Instead of worshipping that, we go and worship statues made of rocks.

 Note: Some of the famous temples are built at hard-to-reach places of the science happening underneath them. The lands that these temples are built on are of high intensity magnetic waves which produce positive vibrations inside the body.

Fortunately, the very first family we asked allowed us to stay in their home for just one night. Not only that, they also provided us the dinner with the next morning breakfast. That one night was a hell of night.Now let’s talk about the night that we spent in the village. Firstly it was really very generous of the villagers to allow us to stay with them for a night as we were complete strangers to them. We were correct on our schedule as we knew the TAMASHA Group was going to hit that village on that weekend.

TAMASHA will be well known to people by the song “Aa Re PritamPyare…”. The whole village accumulated at a school ground, a short stage was built up where a group of Middle Aged Women performed their dances which was enjoyed by the whole village. We could not cover much of the event as the villagers didn’t seem happy about clicking pictures of the Dancing Group.

It was a typical (typical what?), where people didn’t need alarm clocks to get up. Our next morning tea was made from Fresh Cow milk which was extracted from the cow the same morning. We saw men leaving for the farm and women handling the poultry. It was just like the complete weekend package for us with the country side along.

Bhavin Jain                          Viraj Lokhande