All tagged creativity

Of Kiwi Fruit and Kewpie Dolls: The Wonder of Modern Alankara in Bangalore

The daily aesthetic ornamentation of the deity known as alaṅkāra is an everyday feature of temple ritual. This colorful ornamentation, traditionally of flower garlands and fruit offerings, is synchronized to daily and festival calendars, with spectacular alaṅkāra offered during festivals. Alaṅkāra offers the temple priests scope for creativity, yet it is carefully controlled and codified according to liturgical texts, for it is thought to how God is revealed. Speaking to new practices of alaṅkāra in temples in Bangalore through the usage of new materials such as Kiwi fruit and Kewpie dolls the author suggest a new understanding of modernity and Hindu aesthetics, not only expanding devotees’ understandings of divinity, but inviting devotees to feel adbhutha or wonder.