On Turning Your Home Into A Hindu Temple

[suchandra]

50,000 visitors sounds quite awesome.

 

Couple turn their spare bedroom into a Hindu temple - and attract 50,000 visitors

 

DAILYMAIL.CO.UK

 

By Paul Harris

Last updated at 6:10 PM on 28th May 2008

 

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The queue starts half way across the front garden lawn, somewhere between the pot plants and the lilac tree.

In through the hallway it snakes, up the stairs to the landing, and then to the little room at the front of the house.

People are waiting in the living room, relaxing in the dining room, and drinking tea in the kitchen from a fresh pot that Mrs Sushila Karia and her husband Dhirajlal have just brewed. Everyone talks very quietly and patiently waits their turn.

Tourist attraction: Worshippers queue to see the spare bedroom which has been turned into a Hindu temple

 

This is the Hindu temple that Mr and Mrs Karia created in a spare room at their otherwise ordinary home. Not in deepest India, by the way, but in a residential road in the heart of seaside Essex.

It has proved so popular that for the last 29 years, the house has attracted worshippers and visitors from all over Britain and across the world - 50,000 of them at the last count, and still arriving by the coachload. On particularly busy days they might wait hours in the queue for the chance to spend ten minutes in private prayer in the 9ft by 6ft spare bedroom, used as a humble study before Mr Karia came up with his brainwave.

Welcoming: Sushila and Dhirajlal Karia have allowed 50,000 worshippers into their home

Seventeen gods and goddesses central to the Hindu religion are represented in statue form, strategically placed in the room. They were blessed by five priests from India in a 13-day inauguration ceremony that involved carrying the statues to the nearby beach and bathing them in the sea. The blessing is designed to bring the statues alive and make them worthy of prayer.

Thus, everything a Hindu pilgrim might want is available here - peace, prayer, friendship and happiness - and of course, Mrs Karia's tea. Since suffering a bout of pneumonia, the 67-year-old part time teacher can no longer cope with preparing food and treats for everyone but guests are welcome to bring their own.

The couple created the temple because none was available locally when they moved in the 1970s from North London, where they ran a newsagents. In those days Mr Karia, an electronics engineer from Uganda, and his wife, from India, had to make a 90-mile round trip to the capital to the nearest temple. So instead, they made their own. The original plan was that the couple, their son, daughter, family and friends would worship there.

Popular: The shrine has 17 marble statues of gods which were flown over from India

 

Now - three decades later - Britain's most unlikely temple has been visited by Hindus from as far away as Canada and Nepal, as well as by curious tourists from other religions. On Hindi festival days such as Diwali it becomes the central focus for scores of Hindu families, who, like Mr and Mrs Karia, made England their home.

'We couldn't have picked a nicer place to live than England,' Mr Karia, 68, told me yesterday. 'We always ask god to protect the Queen and we say a prayer for the English people because everyone has been so good to us. We've had thousands and thousands of people coming through our door and there has never been any trouble, never been any complaints. Our neighbours are so tolerant. They're lovely people - a godsend.'

All visitors are requested to respect the tranquility of the neighbourhood by talking only quietly, and queuing in an orderly fashion. This is England, after all.

 

 

Unlikely attraction: The house in Essex has attracted 50,000 worshippers

If there was any undue disturbance on the day of the inauguration - when 800 people turned up and police were drafted in for crowd control duty - it seems to have been lost in the passage of time. One neighbour said the Karias were 'charming people' and that the temple had 'never been a problem'.

These days, a maximum of only 100 visitors at a time is considered practical. On Tuesday a coachload of 78 women turned up from London, some carrying shopping bags or wheeling suitcases. Sometimes it's a couple arriving for a wedding blessing. Yesterday a party arrived unexpectedly, including a pilgrim from Wapping.

'When the weather's nice, people come to the seaside with their families, go to the beach, visit the funfair... and come to the temple. It's different in the snow and rain of course. We don't mind who comes or from what background. We believe that we are all part of each other, part of nature, and we treat everybody the same.'

 

Devoted: Coachloads of worshippers visit the detached home in the Essex seaside town

Visitors tend to spend only a short time in the temple itself, sometimes alone, sometimes with a couple of fellow worshippers. In such a small space, four people is about capacity anyway. They kneel or sit on a patterned oatmeal carpet in the burgundy-coloured room, facing the statue-gods and flanked by ceremonial candles. Although the prayers are private, Mr Karia assumes that most people would wish for health and happiness for their families 'and perhaps for a good job'. Despite unspoken pressure from the queuing multitudes behind, a period of meditation is seldom discouraged.

So why might someone travel from Manchester, Leicester or India to worship in Coan Avenue, Clacton-on-Sea? 'I never ask people why they come but sometimes they tell me they like it because it is peaceful, more personal. One person told me that here, they make wishes, and the wishes come true. If that is the case, I am delighted.'

Now the couple are trying to raise funds to start a community centre and temple elsewhere locally so the spirit of what they began three decades ago can live on. Mr Karia said: 'We are not young any more. We might not be here for long, and the temple would not continue here without us. It would be good if we could leave something behind.'