A Beautiful Devi Shrine Amidst Chaos, Coimbatore

As my friend and fellow travel blogger Shrinidhi Hande once said, not all blog posts need to be long. :D Taking this cue, here is a little piece on a beautiful Devi aka Amman shrine situated in the middle of a tri-junction of very chaotic roads near the Town Hall area of Coimbatore. By the time you reach this shrine you have already gotten well into the chaotic part of the city.

This is the only picture I have of it. I have seen it twice now, the first time it was open and the time I clicked this picture, it was closed. Both times, it drew my eyes amidst all the chaos. And yet, I hardly registered the carvings and deities on it. So it was only when I searched on Google maps for the name and other details about it, I saw it called “Amman Temple“. That’s all. No reviews. No more details.

And then I looked at this photo again and started registering the details.

The two beautiful Lakshmi devis at the door. Usually, the dwaar paalikas (door guardians) are scary or weird. This is the first time I recall seeing Lakshmi as the dwaar paalika.

And on top of the shrine, we have two direction guardians with a scary form at the corners, and in the middle we see Ganesha and Kartikeya flanking the two sides with the Devi in the middle. So it is Parvati with her two sons.

Beautiful.

This is one of the rare Amman or Devi temples I have seen actually. I have been to the Devi shrine inside Shiva temples and Vishnu temples. But never really been to many Devi temples.

Amidst all my temple related posts on this blog, the only other two that are Devi temples are the Kali temple of Kolkata and Hadimba & Ghatochkach temple of Manali.

Actually, I have some clue-lessness when it comes to the Devi. I have been delving into it for a while now.

It’s like a blind spot of some kind.

Have you sometimes come across such a blind spot? Something that you know, but fail to register. Something like that.

Anyway, that’s the short post for you today. :)