I visited a Hanuman temple a couple of days ago on the occasion of Sri Ram's birthday. There was a service in progress that can be roughly translated to uttering Hanuman's thousand names to glorify and remember his deeds. The priest was chanting with a microphone in his hand. When he reached the end of the chant, the sound of temple bells drowned his voice. From there the decibel level steadily increased until it became unbearable. As if it had achieved it's purpose, the bells stopped. Then began vaathyams, thavil and nagaswaram, at its loudest. We stood our ground as if challenging the musicians to try harder to drive us away. I admit that I was the first bhaktha to flee and thus this blog was born, just outside the temple. While I was about to conclude this piece, somebody cleared their throat in a microphone and a man started rendering Ramayana in villu paatu (ancient Tamil artform for musical rendition of stories), leaving me searching for the paatu (music) in his rather gruff voice.
