Temples of Halasuru

 

 

Halasuru has some really interesting old temples, so we had to make a separate series!

 

Someshwara temple -

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One of the oldest temples in Bangalore,Someshwara temple ( 1000 year old temple) dedicated to shiva, was built by the cholas and further modified during the Vijayanagar period under the rule of Hiriya Kempe Gowda II. We visited the temple when it was yet to open, so it was empty which gave us good enough time to look around slowly. The temple was bigger than what we had imagined, and it had some really interesting architecture,the pillars had carvings of different animals/gods.It was nice walking around and observing the architecture under the shade of the tall trees, the question of how the pillars were carved/how long did it take to build ? What is the significance of the carvings? occurred to our minds…We noticed that they were repainting the temple into a golden color. That part was a little disappointing for us since the original stone color looked very nice and matched the vibe of the temple. After looking around and sitting for a while we asked 2-3 people working at/around the temple about the history, but they didn’t have any new info.

 

Kempamma Devi Temple -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another temple that we visited was the Kempamma Devi temple, constructed a few centuries ago. Worshiping the Devi is known to solve any marriage/mensuration/diseases. It is believed that Ma kempamma has protected earlier kings of Halasuru from enemy attacks, and upon being prayed by a physician also cured any disease that a physician was unable to cure. Listening to these stories from Anuradha aunty was a nice experience.While we were looking around the temple, I stepped on a rusted grill on the floor and got a cut on my leg. It started bleeding and after inspecting the grill we saw that it was rusted. A local said that warming my leg near a fire might help, we did that but I still had to take a tetanus shot at a nearby hospital. Slowly our first visit of this semester was turning into a nightmare for me( I’m really scared of injections). But I’m so grateful that it didn’t hurt at all so it wasn’t that bad after all, but we had to cut short our visit.

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This was our experience of our exploration of temples at Halasuru :)