I am very much an admirer of Ravi Verma paintings. It didn’t surprise me that the Gods we prayed and the beautiful pictures we saw on the calendars were drawn by Ravi Verma. I particularly remember the picture of Saraswati, who was my personal favorite Goddess. We had a separate prayer for Goddess Saraswati….well she was the goddess of knowledge! Ravi Verma was an international figure. Sometime back I also read the criticism that his paintings were responsible for brahmanisation of gods…..that is they were now properly clothed and so conservatism in depicting gods was initiated. Whatever maybe the criticism I find the gods in Ravi Verma paintings extremely appealing. Ravi Verma also depicted scenes from Purunas and his paintings were spectacular in its detail. I always have atleast one miniature copy of Ravi verma painting pasted on my room wall. 
Talking of my tryst with religion I rebelled out in my teens. Our home was also Bala Vihar for Geethapadam in Thiruvanathapuram on Sundays; I used to be missing on these occasions.
I find lots of difference between south Indian (particularly kerala) temples and north Indian temples not only in its structure (like absence of gopurams) but also in the way they pray. Kerala temples are very sober place and they have strict dress code. Sanctum sanatorium is out of bound. The pujari is very serious in his rituals. Whereas in north you can go inside the sanctum and even touch the god and have a small personal chat!!!. I recollect when I was 6 or 7 years old we used to stay in North India (Sagar in MP) and there was a small Hanuman temple (and a tree) in the centre of the housing colony. This used to be part of the playground for us.
And in the afternoons we used to climb on the Hanuman and enact Ramayana or whatever occurred to us. By evening things changed and temple became a sacred place and a pujari used to recite hanuman chalisa and we children rang the bells (there used to be competition among us as to who made the maximum noise!!) and wait for the ultimate treat; Prashad!!. It is only recently that Superman, Batman, Spiderman….has taken over the sky. In our times it was only and only Hanuman- the monkey god!. And I always liked playing monkey god by filling air in the mouth. It also suited me very well…as a kid I was very skinny and short (much shorter than my one year younger sis, it was quite embarrassing as people used to think she was older, later we accepted it that way).
I have been to Vaishano Devi temple many times and like the trek, they keep saying jai mata di, jhor ki bolo jai mata di, arre sunn nahi dhendha jai mata di…its real fun. It’s a wonder that nobody ever got stuck in ardh kuvari cave. They also serve excellent halwa.
In contrast I didn’t like the trek to Ayyappan temple (here they chant swami sharanam ayyappa sharanam. In contrast to the kind of stories told to me about those jungles, it was much sedated). I was around 14 when I went to shabarimala. The problem was the cops launched me up from the bottom of pathinattam padi (18 sacred steps) and my mundu slipped out and when I reached the top of the steps I was in my underwear….people were laughing and I said: this is it no more shabarimalas for me. Never been to that place after that.
