My first Krishna Janmashtami in Hyderabad...(a photo essay)

The sun is coming up and a grey glow is sneaking through our bedroom window as I type this!!  It's just about 6:00 in the morning.  What is striking about this particular morning is that this place is a cornucopia of different religious practices!!  As I sat here at 5:00 A.M. - - the conch-shells were being blown all over town at Hindu temples large and small for the beginning of Ganesha Chaturthi (an eleven-day celebration of the birthday of Lord Ganesh) - - the month-long fast of Ramadan is coming to a close today as well... and the neighborhood Muslims are gathering for prayer at the mosque up the street from here (their call to prayer, the Adhan, was being called this morning from loudspeakers at around 4:45 A.M.).  How different a place Hyderabad is from home.  In Pasadena or Hollywood, if you rang Church bells this early - - the ACLU would come and file a lawsuit and and injunction to tear down your steeple (especially if it had a Cross on top!)

Ten days ago, on the first day of September, our driver Krishna, our security man, Sangamesh (who, I found out that night, is actually a pujari (priest) at the temple dedicated to Lord Shiva in his home village!  The name "Sangamesh" is also one of the 108 Names of Lord Shiva!) and I went over to the Jaganatha Temple in Jubilee Hills for the celebration of Lord Krishna's birthday, called Krishna Janmashtami.  It was an amazing experience for me!  It was the first time I had ever been inside a real Hindu temple (well, if you don't count the ISKCON (Hare Krishna) Temple in Culver City and the "Fesival of the Chariots" on Venice Beach!).  It was hard to describe what it was like.  A Hindu festival is a rare combination of solemn religious zeal and a carnival!  I'll let the pictures that I took that night speak for themselves.  My first try at a "photo essay".  For the captions for the individual photos - see click on this link to my Facebook Photo Album entitled Janmashtani Festival - 2010