Mahesh Patel prayed his business would rebound. It did. So he offered a drink to a temple in India's western Gujarat state in thanks.
For Patel and thousands like him in Gujarat, getting liquor is difficult. It is the only one of India's 28 states that bans liquor sales and manufacture.
But at a temple that honors the Hindu deity Lord Bhairavnath in the Ahmedabad suburb of Maninagar, the prohibition laws don't seem to matter.
The shrine, tucked away down a narrow lane, gets hundreds of liquor bottles weekly from devotees like Patel who pray to Bhairavnath, the god of terror, for a blessing.
The temple, which only accepts Indian knockoffs of international liquor brands, has survived raids by the 1,500-member state prohibition department as local residents protect its existence zealously from anybody trying to disrupt the religious proceedings.
"These laws are framed by humans and they don't apply in the court of the Lord. Lord Bhairavnath is appeased only by offering liquor," Shivnath, the head-priest of the temple says.
Patel agrees that offering liquor in return for a blessing was worth the risk of being arrested for buying a bootleg bottle of booze in the state.
"I was facing financial losses in my business for a long time," Patel said.
"One of my friends guided me to this temple. I had offered puja (prayer) here and promised to make a liquor offering if my business recovers. Now that it has, here I am."
Shivnath says the offerings are done in a highly ritualized manner. They take place every Sunday, and long lines of devotees clutching cloth or plastic bags in a suspicious manner form outside the temple.
The bottles, which must be sealed to prove the devotee has not had a drink beforehand, are taken from the
devotees by temple staff and Shivnath pours a peg or two on a statue of the deity.
The liquor accumulates in a shallow rock bowl underneath the statue while the remainder in the bottle is stored inside the temple. Shivnath declined to say what happens to all the liquor
offered.
The devotee, who must bathe before the offering, gets a half coconut as prasad (blessing), or if really insistent, the priest will also give a spoon-full of liquor as well.
"Those who are childless come here seeking an heir, while spirited lovers come here to seek a solution to their romantic problems, the diseased pray before Bhairavnath Dada (father) to get cured," says Shivnath, who is the only one with the right to make the liquor offering to the Lord.
"No one returns empty-handed from here."
Gujarat's tourism industry has been fighting the ban on liquor sales, arguing that the state, ruled by Hindu-nationalist Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is losing tax money as bootleggers smuggle booze from neighboring states.
But Modi has been adamant in squashing all proposals for abolishing or even partially lifting prohibition in Gujarat, a state known as the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi.
The temple is located in the state assembly district Modi represents.
Recently the prohibition department sent a team to the temple to investigate the liquor offerings, but could not find any booze.
But the smell of liquor hangs in the air outside the temple and some residents say that it's possible that the prohibition officers just aren't willing to run the risk of divine retribution.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and