Vengurla
This place is one of the best amongst the others. Here life is like the other towns very “sushegat” (relaxed in a way). The seashore has its own natural beauty .the additional attraction being the clean seashore and seawaters.
Here is a photo graph depicting a few of the beaches,
It is also well known Hindu temples the sagarika temple, shri mauli-devi temple, shri redi ganesh temple. Aajgaon, shiroda, redi,aachra etc all these are names of small towns and villages. It is often found that majority of the population around this area is of the saraswat Brahmin or bhandari community. The “sir-names” will be shirodkar from shiroda village, achrekar from achra village the redkar from village redi so the village and names are inter-woven or inter-connected. Vengurla being a beach and a beautiful place was looted and plundered in ancient times.
Here I would also like to explain the word “gramdaivat”.
What is a gram-daivat?
A gram daiwat is the god of the village.gram means village and daivat is god or some supernatural power. Even today, if you go to these villages one finds people desperately having beliefs and blind belief. Endless arguments are carried on as to what is a belief and what is a blind belief.
This can be explained with a small example. Suppose we take the example of “nag-panchami”. Nag means snake and panchami is the fifth day coming in order after a new moon day in the month of “shraavan” of the Hindu calendar. On these days until date, actual snakes brought in small cane baskets. Then people will come and perform puja. Puja means offering of ones obeisance and other offerings to a revered deity. Then the snake will be offered a small dot of vermicelli and red powdered “tikka”dropped (they will not touch it for fright of being bitten). Then this puja ends with the offering of milk to a snake on this day. Therefore, the firm belief was the snake drinks this milk, is happy and blesses.
Now the million-dollar question. How did all this start?
Probably in olden time’s snakes was a great help/nuisance to farmers so to keep them happy this festival has been initiated. There are a couple of other stories too.
So to cut the story short due to efforts of N.G.O. like friends of the animals etc have put an end to this practice of catching live snakes, now puja is done of the image of the snake. So also drinking of milk by the snakes has been stopped and people call it blind belief.
To me it is always a question that those things not proved are beliefs which are all blind and contradictary to the truth or Actual fact and there can never be a blind belief or otherwise.
Coming back to the earlier explanation each village has one god guarding the village. The temple of this god will be at the entrance of that village and every house initiating any new project will first pay obedience to this god. Do not worry the gods grants the blessings by entering a persons body and he or she will start whirling around making all sorts of noises and loud talks and ask for eatables like mutton and fruits or whatever. It is fun to watch all these happenings. Not only this, there are plenty of beliefs and disbeliefs. Each one having its own story, relic, whatever you call it.
Actually, it is very sad to watch all cause this is a part of India the other extreme: uneducated, full of blind-beliefs, poor, ignorant, and unaware of the happenings of the world, exploited by the politicians, urbans educated and the rich.
To be continued
