Sanaa's Musings

Tomorrow is Kaal Bhairav Jayanti. Kaal Bhairav is none other than Lord Shiva in another form. When we travelled to MP, we visited a famous Kaal Bhairav temple where the people offer liquor to Lord Kaal Bairav. This was the first time I saw liquor being offered to a God. I wondered why? Stories say Kal Bhairav is a tantric deity and hence he likes it. Kaal Bhairav assumed this avatar when an enraged Shiva wished to teach Lord Bramha a lesson. It so happened that the Tridevas {Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva} got into an argument on who is the most supreme of all? Lord Shiva stated he was, therefore, Lord Vishnu backed out. However, Lord Brahma was not ready to accept that. It got to a point when sages and scholars had to come in and convince him but Lord Brahma would not back out. An angry Lord Shiva took the form of Kaal Bairav, in his furious avatar, he charged at Lord Brahma and cut off his 5th head. Therefore, Kaal Bhairav helps to keep one’s ego in check. As he cut off Brahma’s head wi...

  Every year, we celebrate Diwali by meeting family, friends, decorating our house, and giving sweets to others. But this year, our school Diwali vacation was only for a week, and we wanted to go on a vacation. So we had no option but to use the Diwali break. We went to MP since it has a good mix of nature, spirituality, history, and wildlife. First 2 days we had fun seeing a lot of temples and statues and we also enjoyed nature with a boat ride at Beda Ghaat. The third day was the actual day of Lakshmi Puja. We had mixed feelings about missing our home Diwali celebration. However to our luck, in the morning, we were fortunate to hear that there was a big Diwali puja at the Narmada ghat in the night. We all went there. The place called Gwari Ghaat was so big. There were lights everywhere along the banks of Narmada and also inside in the water. The boats were lit up with attractive light decor and little lamps offered by people were floating on water. People were selling Diyas and ...

  Shiva’s Presence A week ago my family and I visited Jabalpur which is in MP. We saw many different attractions like Dhuadaar waterfall, Bedaghat boat ride, 64 Yogini temple, Jain mandir, balancing rock, but one thing that I liked the most was the Shiva statue.  It is the tallest Shiva statue in the world which was built in the year 2004 and was made available for the public, tourists, and devotees in 2006. The Shiva statue is blue in color, it has a moon on his head, his snake, Vasuki around his neck, and his trident besides him. Kachnar was a newly formed city and it was chosen as the place where the statue of Lord Shiva, almost 76 feet in height, would be commissioned . The statue has 12 Shiva lingams from all the major Shiva temples in the country. We felt fortunate to get a chance to see it. In Jabalpur, we also went to Bedaghat where we did a boat ride and we saw white marble rocks all around. It is a stretch of 8km north and south where marble rocks exist. Beyond t...

On my 8th birthday, I wanted a panchmukhi Hanuman picture as a gift. I had just finished seeing Ramayan and was blown away by Lord Hanuman. Hanuman was the son of Kesari and Anjani. He is an avatar of Lord Shiva, a devotee of Lord Ram, and a student of Surya dev. I have become his devotee and seek blessings from him. I am his devotee because he’s such a big devotee of Lord Ram and I was stunned by what sacrifices he has done for his lord, Shri Ram. I’ll tell you one story of what Hanuman had done for his lord. A few qualities of Hanuman that I like are that he is knowledgeable, he’s loyal to his lord, He’s powerful, and is faster than the wind.                                                     ~   When the Ram and Ravan war was g...