Hand-made to perfection

This time around, to celebrate the ‘Dasara’ festival, TR Balakrishna and Nirmala, who are from Vijayanagar, have come up with two concepts. The idols used in these two concepts, they say, are hand-made by their family members.

“The first one is ‘Jeevanadalli Dashavathara’. This is a unique concept that relates the ‘Dashavathara’ of Lord Vishnu to the various stages of human life.  In this concept, we have tried to explain how God is close to our lives and each one of us takes the ‘avataras’ of Lord Vishnu in our lives,” says Balakrisha.

   “We have made the idols by hand to make everyone understand the different stages of our lives, right from birth to the last days and how we can relate this to the 10 ‘avataras’ of Lord Vishnu. The reason we came up with this concept was to help everyone understand that there’s no need to search for God elsewhere; he is within us,” he says.

The second concept is ‘Biligiri Ranganatha Jaatre’. “In this concept we have again made all the idols by hand, right from the hill to the small stores deployed during the gatherings. This concept symbolises the annual gatherings of the devotees in Biligiri Ranganatha Swamy Temple. In today’s world, most of us do not get to understand these kind of events. We wanted to introduce these concepts to today’s generation, who can have a glimpse of a ‘Jaatre’ (fair) and also understand our culture,” he adds.