Swaminarayan experience

First stop – Swamy Narayan temple. I thought it is a temple of Vishnu (Narayan). I checked google maps and there were 2 in Ahmedabad alone within a distance of 2km. I went inside to see the statue of a man in a sherwani as the God deity and not the statue of Vishnu sitting over Ananta. I opened Wikipedia and there were mentions of Swaminarayan as a spiritual guru. Confused I walked down to the enquiry counter.

There was an old man with a lot of enthusiasm. I asked him politely

“Are there two Swaminarayan temples in Ahmedabad?”

“There are five”, he replied with a smile.

I asked him to explain and he was happy as someone asked him a deep question. He told me about Swaminarayan who was basically a ascetic and was considered God incarnate. He talked about his legacy, his disciples, how so many temples came into being and so on. After the 20 minutes lecture everything was clear in my head. I got to know about a new person for the first time (judge my GK and I don’t care). Later in the day when I visited Akshardham temple a lot more things about Swaminarayan got clear.

Akshardham temple

Akshardham temple helps you to practice abstinence. It is such a beautiful place with so many spots craving to be photographed. The spots will make you look good just because they are in the backdrop. Yet, you are not allowed to take your mobile or camera or any recording device.

Whoever came up with this idea must be getting at least a million curses from the people visiting the temple. I won’t hazard thinking how his next life is going to be for all the bad karma accrued.

One thing that was strange was the statues of Sita, Rukmini, Parvathi and Lakshmi were all the same. Just the saree colour was different. However the statues of Rama, Krishna, Shiva and Vishnu were all different.

The temple and the gardens around it are extremely beautiful and well maintained. The main deity is Swaminarayan. The story of Swaminarayan is displayed in the first floor of the temple. The paintings and art work along with it is extremely beautiful. All this beauty can only be remembered in the brain. Not in the cloud.