India; Unity in Diversity

Music, classical or of other kinds, takes an essential seat in the life of Indian people. Like other things, music and musical instruments are different in different states/regions.

India’s classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration, cultural expression and pure entertainment.

Those are my favorite actors too

Indian Film Industry, the largest Film Industry

Indian Film Industry is largely known as Bollywood. B from Bombay and rest from Hollywood. The posters above are from old movies, in different languages. See, each year India produces approximately 1000 movies in 14 or more different languages.

So the movie list for an enthusiastic movie watcher (like me) is endless you see . There are movies in hindi, tamil, malayalam, sometimes bengali and of course English for me to watch.

Monuments: Taj Mahal

Monuments are something which you can see, touch and feel and hence they’ve important place in a country’s sketch. They tell a lot of stories too, ancient and modern.

Till decades before (may be 10 or so years before) it was the perfect paradise of lovers and poets. Or so it is quoted from the memories of a lot. The moonlight nights at Taj are so famous. Now I think due to security restrictions they close Taj at night.

The view on the other side is also magnificent. Taj Mahal is built on the banks of Yamuna (Jamuna) river.

This is a temple in South India, dedicated to Shiva & Meenakshi. Its tallest spire rises 60 meters, and was for many years the tallest structure in its category in Asia.

Question: I have seen this Meenakshi temple lots of time in Television and personal photographs. I did not know about it very well, that it is for Shiva and Meenakshi….generally in north india and ofcourse in nepal we have combination of Shiva and Parbati (shiva’s wife), so could you please tell me little bit about Devi Meenakshi…..

 

Answer: Meenakshi (meen=fish akshi=eye) was a princess who got married to Shiva in Madurai, hence the temple named after her. You can see the legend of Meenakshi here. At first there was only a Shiva temple in the place. Later it was rebuilt by several kings and the dominance of Meenakshi developed later. In fact, Meenakshi was a incarnation of Parvati herself.