BY
PRAGYANSHARAMA POLAVARAPU(VRS.SOMANCHI)
TEMPLE FOR THE FIERCE LION GOD
It is 25 years back that I visited
the beautiful temple in the thickly forested hills near Mallur village of
undivided Warangal district of Telangana state. It is the glorious temple of
Lord Narasimha – incarnation of Lord Almighty of the Universe called by Hindus
as Lord Vishnu . It was seven or eight years before I retired from government
service in the Postal Department of Government of India. The temple of Lord
Narasimha (the angry Lion God) at Mallur is famous in all the
neighboring districts and also in the entire state. I still vividly remember
the visit because we could walk for two kilometers atop the long low hill in
the beautiful forest environment on a cool pleasant morning to reach the
temple. It was a nice experience.
The temple in the most
beautiful jungle surroundings attracts thousands of devotees in festival
season from the towns and cities besides from the surrounding
rural areas. I have also now enclosed photograph of another great
temple of Lord Narasimha in the Telangana state. It is the temple of
Yadagiri Gutta (Yadadri) of Nalgonda district which is about 270
kilometers from Hyderabad. The majestic newly built stone temple of Yadadri is
full of great art and sculpture . To create a feel of the beautiful
forest environment I put several photographs of jungle greenery on the posts.
The photo is given below
The ancient
philosophers preached about utter necessity of morality,
goodness and truthfulness and about same god almighty existing in every
person (i.e. about equality of all human beings). They talked of the
indestructible soul in every person and proclaimed that the soul keeps
its individuality even for a million births till it is purified and
becomes as holy as the soul of god almighty. The later
Ramayana-Mahabharata philosophers realized that ordinary persons are like
little children playing with toys and are not much attracted by
hair-splitting philosophic theories. The philosophers felt that ordinary
people wanted to hear about the holy deeds of gods and about
beautiful heavens where the holy gods reside. The following posts on my visit
to the holy temple at Mallur about 25 years ago are written based on my old
diary noting.
At that time I worked as postmaster
of Kamalapur post office. It was a village in the midst of a jungle where a
giant wood pulp factory was established 50 years ago. It was about ten
kilometers from Mallur.At Kamalapur the factory was at one end and
a gated modern residential colony was at the other end and in between was
the old village .The residential colony though become a little old had
most modern facilities as in a metro city— electric power, Godavari water and
cable TV all provided on 24 hour basis.
The village was located in a
big forest beside the Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway. The wide, majestic Godavari
river flows nearby. The factory had its own captive power plant based on coal
from nearby Kothagudem collieries. The factory provided employment
to a thousand workers and several more daily wage contract workers. It was a
very busy place. But now it appears that the factory is closed temporarily.
The area around Kamalapuram except
for the agricultural villages is covered with forests. It is not big
un-passable forest of giant trees with spreading branches but simple endless
forest of lean long trees. There were also a few giant trees –with fat trunks
and growing to very great height vertically–in the residential colony where the
postmaster was also provided with a residential quarter among
junior officers of the company. The giant trees were so majestic and were
completely different from the trees we see in our towns and villages.
There were fine sports stadiums,
gardens and play grounds. The luxury buses to Warangal (140 kms away)
where we went often sped through beautiful forest for
more nearly two hours amidst wild scenery . It was endless wilderness on
all sides with fallen trees here and there and frequent bird calls. In nights
antelopes move about in forest and some people illegally hunt them in nights
focusing very powerful electric torch light into their eyes to stun them. There
was red dust everywhere. In the forest there were pillar like “snake
dwellings” said to be built by snakes with red earth . There were many
stories in the village about long bulky snakes of python type seen in the
forest and sometimes even in the forest side villages. I enjoyed every minute
of the bus journey through the thick forest whenever I visited nearby
Warangal city.
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