Of Kiwi Fruit and Kewpie Dolls: The Wonder of Modern Alankara in Bangalore

Abstract: The daily aesthetic ornamentation of the deity known as alankara is an everyday feature of temple ritual. This colorful ornamentation, traditionally of flower garlands and fruit offerings, is synchronized to daily and festival calendars, with spectacular alankara offered during festivals. Alankara offers the temple priests scope for creativity, yet it is carefully controlled and codified according to liturgical texts, for it is thought to demonstrate how God is revealed. Speaking to emergent practices of alankara in temples in Bangalore through the usage of new materials such as Kiwi fruit and Kewpie dolls I suggest an understudied, intersectional space of understanding of modernity and Hindu aesthetics, not only expanding devotees’ understandings of divinity, but inviting devotees to feel adbhutha or wonder. In this essay, I collaborate with Kashi Shastri, a priest at a Ganesha temple in Bangalore, to present a rich and wonderful archive of various alankara. Through this collaborative archive I explore the emerging materiality of alankara through the joyful use of new and experimental objects and decorations. I argue that the modern recrafting of alankara allows us to rethink what alankara is and does as an aesthetic practice—its colors, materials, practices and codifications—as well as what it says about Hindu notions of humanity and divinity.

Citation: Srinivas, Tulasi.  “Of Kiwi Fruit and Kewpie Dolls: The Wonder of Modern Alankara in Bangalore.” The Jugaad Project, 2 Dec. 2020, thejugaadproject.pub/kiwi-fruit-and-kewpie-dolls [date of access]

Betel Leaves and Baubles[i]

In October 2020 the Banashankari Devi deity (a woodland form of Parvati, the great Goddess) was dressed in green betel[ii] leaves, to celebrate the first day of her annual festival of the Nine Nights. The edible leaves were layered like the scales of a fish, in size from small to large, from tender lime green to deep forest green. The deity, made of black granite, wreathed in a garland of yellow marigolds, sat weighted under this vegetal abundance.

Several newly harvested basketloads of the leaves, had been delivered the previous night to the Ganesha Temple in the south Indian city of Bangalore. Plywood paneling had been installed around the deity as background for various decorative schemes during the nine nights of the festival. Through the early dawn hours the priests worked furiously to cover the paneling with the leaves, transforming the entire concrete temple into natural greenscreen. When viewed from the front it afforded devotees the illusion of a green pavilion, which in turn was meant to invoke a woodland dell.

Banashankari Devi shrine decorated with betel leaves and Christmas baubles. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 18th October 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

At certain points in the decoration, the green leaves were studded with bunches of ripe orange arecanut fruits, as the betel leaves are chewed with the arecanut as a digestive all across India. But at other points in the wall, incongruous iridescent red and silver Christmas glass baubles were hung amidst the leaves. How did these glimmering orbs, that were more in tune with an American mall come to be used to decorate a woodland goddess? What about the symbolism of the color scheme? What did the odd juxtaposition of shiny Christmas baubles and betel leaves say about the material aesthetics of ritual decoration or alankara[iii]? Alankara is colorful ornamentation, traditionally of locally grown flower garlands and indigenous fruit offerings, traditional silk clothing and jeweled ornaments, offered daily and on festival days to Hindu deities. As the material worlds of alankara are believed to reflect the essence of the deity, what does this new alankara material say about the possibly shifting notions of the divine? These and similar questions animate this article, inviting us to rethink what alankara is and does as a colorful aesthetic and devotional practice, and how materiality is implicated in ritual practice.

Modern Materiality in Alankara

According to The Jugaad Project (TJP), material religion is defined as “how and why people use material interfaces/mediums such as objects, bodies, spaces, senses and aesthetics to access the invisible, otherworldly, supernatural, magical, mystical, ancestral, and/or divine to achieve certain goals.[iv]” But as Meyer et al. argue, an ‘immaterial religion’ is impossible to find, since beliefs cannot exist without the support of things, places, bodies and practices (2010). In the following pages I will speak primarily about alankara practices in the Ganesha[v] Temple, where the chief priest, Kashi Shastri, is known for his aesthetic skill and his close devotion to the deity. Through a collaboration with him and his family I have gathered a rich and wonderful archive of his photographs of alankara over the past 18 years[vi]. Through them I explore an emerging materiality of ritual aesthetics in the Ganesha Temple as part of a changing Indian ‘religioscape’ (Appadurai 1996), to ask the central question; When analysts speak of the ‘material world’, or more abstractly, of ‘materiality’, what exactly do they mean?

Alankara in Bangalore Temples

Alankara is a long and venerated tradition in Hindu ritual, one of the sixteen upachara, or rites of devotion. As Cynthia Packert argues in in her study of images of Krishna in Braj, skillful decoration of the deity with clothing, flowers and ornamentation is an act of loving adoration (2010). As Urmila Mohan notes, devotees often form a personal bond with the deity based on the dress and ornamentation (2015). Scholars argue that for devotees, these acts of adorning the divine express their affection for the deity and the express divine spiritual perfection.

Alankara is thus considered a high art, meant to create a scopic pleasure and feeling of devotion (anubhava) in the devotee. The beauty of the alankara is said to be governed by a flow of sentiment and sensual appreciation (rasa) whereby the communities’ love of the deity expresses itself in fittingly spectacular alankara. Priests see the alankara as a practice of care for the divinity within the deity. But in a typical colonial inherited beauracratic twist, the nuances of the priest deity relationship are lost as the modern Indian government issues certificates for priests who are deemed to be expert aestheticians, declaring them as “alankara ratna” (jewel of alankara) of the state.

In temples, the decoration of the deity is believed not only to create a beautiful image but also to act as protection against the raw power of the “naked” deity. The materials used in decoration become sacred through interaction with the deity and with the exception of jewelry, they are distributed as a consecrated material blessing after the worship. Often they are perishable and edible, and are consumed by devotees as part of a sacramental ritual.

The rules of alankara form a codex termed the alankara shastra. While alankara offers scope for creativity, it is carefully controlled and codified according to the alankara shastra, for it is thought to show how God is revealed. The seeming gap between the antiseptic codex of alankara and the ecstatic aesthetics and sensuality of contemporary alankara practices suggest an association of sensibility not revealed in the text. But this is not a refusal to see the erotic sensual and passionate for what it is, rather it is to incorporate it into practice of devotion, making it clearly and consciously vital and present.

The culmination of the alankara is the moment of darshan when the deity is revealed to the waiting devotee while offering the sacred camphor flame (Eck 1998). During darshan the central exchange of potent glances between deity and devotee underscores the power of looking and being looked at. The drishti or glance of the deity is considered a blessing  and alankaram is to facilitate the sensual pleasure of seeing the deity in this blessed moment. The spectacular nature of the deity is revealed during this glancing and gazing, making viewing potentially transformatory as a result (Babb 1981). These ways of seeing and being seen form the sacred bond between deity and devotee. But the objective of the aesthetics of alankaram is bifold-- to attract the gaze of the devotee and yet, paradoxically, to enable them separate from the ‘material world’ and to turn their gaze inwards.

Poster of Ganesha shrine decorated with sandalwood and traditional flower garlands. Kashi Shastri in the act of alankara. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 20th April 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

Modern Alankara

But alankara practices and materials are changing in the new India. Tim Ingold in his compendium of works on creativity has argued that materiality, the building of material worlds of “things” is a form of worlding where “life” is privileged (Ingold 2010). I describe how alankara practices and materials widen from the traditional fruit and flowers, to forms of life as yet unconsidered (such as Christmas baubles) to include materials that draw from and evoke a romantic pop-culture-themed internationalism.

It is no accident that this project is set in the megacity of Bangalore[vii] at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, for Bangalore is the home of experimental technology and of “instant” Internet millionaires. It is known as the “Silicon Valley” of Asia, deeply connected to global circuits of capital and culture (Heitzman 1999). To show the connections that Bangalore has to this global tech world, on one festival day Kashi decorated dressed the deity as a software engineer, complete with security identification badges. What do these new alankara reveal the about the nature of aesthetics in a context where global capitalism, its labor and consumption practices are existential realities for devotees and priests alike?

Ganesha shrine with deity as Vidya “knowledge” Ganesha, dressed as a software engineer with security identification tags. Alankara to mark a free book distribution for school children. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 26th may 2016. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

New Alankara and Aesthetic Appreciation

Devotees sensorially evaluate the materials and colors of the alankara often commenting favorably on the color scheme, the clothing, the flowers and ornaments used, the skill of the priest, the prettiness of the scheme or the power of the vision, and so on. “How nicely the priest has done the alankara! The white jasmine and red roses is too good!” or “Super decoration...Latest!!! See the LED display? I can get it on my phone even now he puts it on Facebook Live!”

Ganesha deity wrapped in the Indian flag for Indian Independence day. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 14th August 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

The use of color while it excites aesthetic appreciation, does not seem to engage devotees’ attention as much as experimentation. Rather, the use of color is valuable for it underscores the established symbolism of specific colors. On Indian Independence day for example, the deity was dressed in the tricolor of the Indian flag--saffron, green and white—easily conflating the Hindu god with the nation state of India. Or, when the temple was doing a blood drive, they decked the Ganesha deity out in blood-red roses.

Raktha (blood) Ganesha alankara. The blood is supposed to be of evil demons offered to the deity. It marked a blood donation camp. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 7th April 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

In contrast, new materials and technologies are understood to have intentionality both of their own volition, and through being used to enhance divinity. For example, the randomized blinking computerized LED lights were said to be “super!” a version of “modern prakasha” (illumination), likened by devotees to the beam of light from Shiva’s third eye. Priests cater to and enhance the communities’ sense of being savvy aesthetes capable of nuanced discrimination, through fabulous alankara that include new materials and technical processes (such as drones with laser lights) that develops over time. But this ‘becoming’ can occur with relatively mundane materials as well.

Take the case of fruit.

In early 1998 I noticed that a sliced apple had been used as decoration on the titular Ganesha deity. Noticing a sticker on the apple that said “Washington apple” I asked Kashi Shastri how these “foreign” fruits, which were potentially polluting, could be included. He said, “apples are grown in Kashmir also” whereby the imported apple was given a homeland provenance. I was silenced.

Banashankari Devi deity in a fruit alankara. Notice her hair studded with pomegranate seeds and kiwi slices. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 23rd October 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

In December 2002 another new fruit had crept into the alankara – a kiwi fruit. Cut into glistening bright green slices, they adorned the face of the Devi deity, along with pomegranate seeds. Seemingly oblivious to my concerns with indigeneity, “They have newly come from Australia,” Kashi said. Then he added as rationalization, that his son was studying geography in school, and had “been informed” that in an era  “before,” “India” had stretched to Australia. The introduction of Gondwanaland, a 200 million year old supercontinent, for the inclusion of imported Kiwi fruits rested uneasily with me.

Finally, in October 2020, Kashi sent me a photograph of the ultimate fruit alankara--expanded to include starbursts of pineapples, garlands of apples, kiwi and pomegranates, tinsellated melons, and clusters of plastic grape vines and fruit, interspersed with fruit candies. The concern with indigeneity and purity was replaced by the romantic and powerful lure of the foreign.

Banashankari Devi shrine with fruit pavilion of imported grapes, peaches and apples. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 23rd October 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

For dynamic alankara like the fruit alankara, that we see develop over time in Bangalore, improvisation which reads forward into the future (what Delueze and Guattari called ‘lines of becoming’) in a series of unfolding experiments towards an aesthetic that provokes wonder is fundamental (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 3-4). This emergent aesthetic seem to rely on three principles—polychromy, iridescence and overdensity, to which technical wizardry is added. And this arsenal of polychromatic color, glittery iridescence, and replicated form, married with new technologies, suggest a new way of understanding both matter and meaning.

Polychromy, Iridescence and Replication

The alankara that are the most popular are those that involve many colors, layered density and metallic iridescence, preferably with newish technical gadgetry seen as integral to the production of value. For example, when Banashankari Devi is dressed as the goddess of wealth, the shiny gold surfaces, glittery tinsel, the pavilion made of replicated currency notes, and the magical animatronics of coins spilling from her hands make this alankara particularly popular and potent.

Banashankari Devi alankara as Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. Gif with coins falling as blessings form her right hand. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 26th October 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

The polychromatic currency with the colorful saris and flowers, the ‘repetition,’ ‘folding,’ and ‘refraction’ of light and glitter and gold saturates the visual field with repeated or refracted signs contributing to sensation of overdensity (Mines 2005). The intensification and multiplication are a way for the devotee to understand the nature of God as beautiful, inclusive and overflowing (Gold 2008), offering a capacious understanding of material agency (Flueckiger 2013). Here the divine excess symbolically captures a wonderment which the human life cannot.

Banashankari Devi in Bananthe (new mother) alankara. Notice the Kewpie doll as the divine baby. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 16th October 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

On another night of the Nine Nights festival, the goddess was decorated as a new mother “Bananthe Devi.” The divine infant was represented by a bald, Western-looking Kewpie baby doll (with an added Kumkum bindi[viii] to render it Hindu). Kashi Shastri received many thousands of “likes” when he shared a video of the alankara on Facebook, in which a crying human child abruptly cut to the deity holding the doll. It also received hundreds of thank you emojis which in India is interpreted as praying hands.

Banashankari Devi shrine decorated with Disney toys for the ‘bombe” alankara of toys. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

In yet another alankara at the Nine Nights festival, the deity is traditionally portrayed as a girl surrounded by dolls. Eschewing the traditional wooden dolls which were largely monochromatic, Kashi Shastri surrounded the deity with Disney soft toys in blinding colors including Mickey Mouse (with bright red bows) and yellow Minions. Kashi saw this Disney doll alankara as validating the technical skill of the devotees and the global circuits of capital and labor. “All these Disney cartoons are made just here in Bangalore. On the computer!” A more powerful understanding of globalization and its expansive power for cultural appropriation is yet to be articulated. Appropriation has always been the powerful grabbing the cultural objects of the powerless, but for Kashi to grab Disney’s branded objects showed a sense of mischief, almost of restorative justice.

Conclusion: New Alankara Changing The Biometrics of Divinity

It appears that while color is used in alankara more conservatively in keeping with traditional rules and symbolism, new materials and technologies do not follow these rules. The communities aesthetic appreciation coalesces around a love of variegation and multiplicity. Priests like Kashi Shastri build and describe a new world through improvisational alankaram that uses new materials  or uses quotidian objects in new ways—the essence of Jugaad.

Priests like Kashi decorate the God in all the most modern and glamorous that the global mercantile world can offer: paper fans, plastic fruit, silk flowers, satin and tinsel, toy automata, LED lighting, and sequined glitter. The point is that these things are new, foreign, romantic, mysterious and excessive. They largely provoke sentiments of delight, curiosity and fantasy--a baroque bewitchment. These new alankara reinforce a worldview that regards light, color, and brilliance as indicators the deity’s enchanted power, and so they break down the perceived contradictions between transcendence and materiality.

In sum these new alankara change the biometrics of the divine, by expanding it towards a universe of things, extending it beyond the confines of India and beyond the contemporary moment. Allowing for an expanded materializing of devotional practice, the new alankara is part of a larger turn to experimental Hinduism in a pursuit of wonder (Srinivas 2018).

All alankara. Sri Maha Ganapathi temples, Malleshwaram, Bangalore, 25th October 2020. Photo by Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastri.

References Cited

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Babb, L.A.  Glancing: Visual Interaction in Hinduism. Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 37, No.4. 1981. Pp. 39

Eck, D. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Flueckiger, J. When the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddess, Indianapolis: Indiana University press 2013.

Gold, A. G. Deep Beauty: Rajasthani Goddess Shrines Above and Below the Surface. International Journal of Hindu Studies. 12 (2)pp 153-179, 2008. DOI: 10.1007/s11407-008-9059-7

Heitzman, J. 1999. ‘Corporate Strategy and Planning in the Science City: Bangalore as "Silicon Valley"?’ Economic and Political Weekly 34: 5 (30 January-5 February): Pp 2-11, 1999.

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Ingold, T. and Hallam E. Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, Oxford: Berg press. 2007. Pp 3-4.

Packert, C. The Art of Loving Krishna: Ornamentation and Devotion, Indianapolis: University of Indiana press, 2010.

Meyer, B. Morgan, D., Paine, C. and  Plate, S.B. (2010) The origin and mission of Material Religion, Religion, 40:3, 207-211, DOI: 10.1016/j.religion.2010.01.010 

Mines, D. Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual and the Politics of Dignity, Indianapolis: Indiana University press, 2005.

Mohan, U. ‘Dressing God: Clothing as Religious Subjectivity in a Hindu Group.’ In Adam Drazin and Susanne Kuechler (eds.) The Social Life of Materials: Studies in Materials and Society, 137-152. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

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Endnotes

[i] I dedicate this article to Professor Charles Lindholm, the kindest mentor I had among many generous mentors as a graduate student at Boston University. That he and his wife Cherry subsequently became friends through a shared love of gardening is evidence of this generosity of spirit and the intellectual nurturing that came naturally to him. My thanks to Professor Ann Gold for reading this in manuscript form and for her suggestions to make it stronger, for technical fixes to it, for her inspirational scholarship on India in toto, and also for her friendship and generosity. I also thank the Kate Hamburger Kolleg of Religion at the Ruhr University-Bochum, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the fellows in both centers as conversations with them helped birthed this article.

[ii] A quid of betel leaves are chewed with processed arecanut as a post meal digestive all across India known as paan. Betel leaves offered with arecanut also symbolize auspicious beginnings.

[iii] I do not use diacritics because this work is not about textuality but about lived religion. It also makes for greater accessibility.

[iv] https://www.thejugaadproject.pub/about-us. Retrieved November 15th 2020.

[v] Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, the son of Shiva, is popular with Hindus for his gargantuan appetite and his role as the remover of obstacles.

[vi] I thank Sri Kashi Vishwanatha Shastry, chief priest of the Sri Mahaganapathi temple, Malleshwaram Bengaluru and his family for their interest in and support of my work.

[vii] Bangalore is now officially called Bengaluru, its precolonial name.

[viii] Kumkum is the red vermilion powder that Hindus, particularly women, use to place in the center of the forehead as the bindi. It is seen as absolutely necessary in ritual and sacred spaces though in modern cities like Bangalore, stick on versions are often used.