By Shobha Rao Smilemaker

Mangaluru, Sep 10: Just one hour's drive away from Mangaluru is a quaint village called Ashwatapura. We entered the village limits from the Neerkere school side. The name literally means waterpond and soon we drove past this beautiful waterbody.

I was told that around 600 years ago, fearing conversions, some 100 families fled Ahmednagar and came down south. About 8 Brahmin families stopped around Moodbidri and the Jain community head called Chowta gave some land to them. We walked around an amazing old village house admiring the wells, trees, small water bodies, and a small snake shrine and got a feel of the sense of devotion among the village locals to the higher power and the reason for the strict adherence here to ancient rituals and customs regarding, birth, daily routines, death, menstruating women, etc.

Ashwatapura village was the common meeting place for all the 8 families. 106 years ago they built the first Shri Rama temple in the whole district. We then walked past the Shankar Acharya mutt and saw the small Maruti temple which used to be at the entrance of the Ashwatapura village on the other side.

I was amazed at the abundance of fresh cashew fruit on a tree and the cows fighting with each other to eat the continuously falling cashew fruit. With a Post office, local bank, general store and a diary, Ashwatapura became a self-sustaining village from early times.

We finally reached the powerful local Ganapati temple, the foundation stone of which was laid by the pontiff of Sringeri mutt. We were blessed to witness the special Gana Homa pooja on the occasion of the annual festival of this Ganapati temple with coconuts and 108 modakas in the afternoon.

Just the previous evening I suddenly remembered my childhood dress with a pink rose at my waist, and I was thrilled to see the simple happiness of a child running around with a dress that had a pink rose at her waist!) At the end of the pooja, the priest reiterated that the Tuesday poojas to Ganesha, performed with humility and faith, have much power and blessings for all the devotees.

After a sumptuous lunch in the community hall, we rested at the new guest house rooms constructed opposite the temple.

In the evening I attended a 'Hari Kathe', a local speciality where the medium of storytelling, music and singing is used to give spiritual knowledge and messages to the audiences.

As kids we would be bored as my Dad made us forcibly sit through such sessions in a Mumbai hall, but hearing the same thing under the skies, inside a village temple, surrounded with supreme devotion is a different experience altogether.

The following cute yet powerful messages were given through simple or religious anecdotes:

1. Let God only give you from his abundant hand, instead of you asking for little from your small sized hand.
2. Ask for God's grace, everything else will follow.
3. Every one lives in two rooms, an outer physical room for others and an inner mental room only for self.
4. Everyone has a Karmic relation with each other..singers and listeners may have been interchanged in past lives.
5. He narrated the story of the birth of Ganesha and how the unusual looking child's body with a big elephant head, has a message for all of us. Similarly when looking at Ganesha, our unusual qualities like kama, krodha, should be destroyed and good qualities should be started.
6. Devi is also called Padmanabha Sahodari because the spirit of Krishna himself manifested as Parvati's child which was made up of mud.
7. He reminded us that Lord Shani gives troubles as karmic retribution and also increases our devotion to maximum.
8. People consider Lord Vithal as the same as Ganapathi.
9. Rat is the vehicle of Ganesha, which was always on the move, till it was controlled by Ganesha. Similarly with the ego moving in all directions, you can get nothing; if ego is in control, then you can get everything with God's grace.
10. There is no use having a thousand things in a home, if like a sleeping child, there is no one to use it. Similarly there is no use of theoretical knowledge if we don't practice it
11. No ahamkara (ego)...only alankara (decoration) of good thoughts, words, deeds
12. Self-realized person will not find the need to talk to others, they will just stop speaking.

With a variety of these gems of wisdom, we got ready for the grand night pooja and aarathi at the Rama and Ganesha temples.

And again after sumptuous night meals as blessings from God, we drove in the dark roads back to our Mangaluru home with a sense of satisfaction of a day we'll spent in devotion to Lord Ganesha.

During the next Ganesha festival. Please do visit this simple Ashwatapura Ganesha temple to be surrounded with smiles of rare simple devotion.

Shobha Rao Smilemaker has a vision of living in a world where people use their ability to find and make smiles in any situation. She is a lawyer by qualification, a soft skills trainer by passion, a motivational speaker, a freelance journalist, a bestselling author, an avid traveler and founder of 'Smilemakers Trainings'. She can be contacted at www.shobhasmilemaker.com.