Series of articles by Shekhar Gupta on the health of our heritage including Meenakshi Temple is thought-provoking. Let us hope that ASI and Govt. of India and the respective Local government bodies wake up and start taking care. More than the govt. officials, the local people are to be educated.
A visit to Meenakshi temple fills us with devotion first and foremost and hence we tend to overlook the things that catches the eyes of Shekhar Gupta. But what he says is absolutely right. How can we let people drill nails on statues and paint the stones with dirty colours and let the mandapams used as shopping malls??
As a student of Fatima college, Madurai, we had cleaned Tirumalai Nayakar mahal and its surroundings. The whole area had huge shrubs and small trees. 50 of us worked for 3 sundays and cleared the whole site and made it spic and span. This happened in 1979.
I wonder whether the colleges that mushroom these days in all parts of Madurai care to send their students on such activites! If so, ASI need not even employ people to clean up the heritage sites.
I hope there are a few college professors in this forum who can take up simple cleaning activities with the help of first and second year students and keep Tamilnadu's heritage sites clean and cared for.
Students should be involved in this type of work. They should take care of temples nearby.
I also feel that nobody should be allowed to build new temples. Instead of this, they can take any old temple they want and they have to take care of this fully.
what is the point in building temples in each new colony involving lakhs of rupees and leaving our old temples even without a little lamp?
Moreover, devotees like us visiting the temple should keep the temple clean.