Lakshmi Narasimha Temple, Bhadravathi

Bhadravathi is popularly known for its steel plant and Mysore paper mills factory (closed now). Lesser known is a Lakshmi Narasimha temple built during the 13th century by Hoysalas. Even though I stayed in Bhadravathi for four years during my childhood days, I had not heard about this temple. I was too young to appreciate the architectural beauty of the temple!!

Recently, we took a short detour to visit this temple while driving to my native place near Jog falls. As I drove my car through the labyrinth of roads in the old town, I was worried about the parking place for my car. We were surprised to find a large open area in the temple compound, thus solving our parking problem.

At the temple

We could see the decorations at the entrance, as it was Vaikunta Ekadashi on the previous day. The unique part of this trikuta (Three garbhagruhas) temple was that the towers were short without any carvings. The beautiful carvings on the outer walls of the temple compensated for it. The temple constructed on a raised platform is typical of the Hoysala style.

The entrance to the temple is through an open pillared hall. Unfortunately, the temple was closed during our visit, and we could see the interior part of it. The base of the outer wall has a set of mouldings. The layer on top of the base has a panel of deities and miniature decorative towers. The superstructure meeting the outer wall of the temple is less carved.

A peepal tree (Arali mara) in front of the temple provided shade for us to rest. It was also a religious place with serpent stones, and people did pradakshine (circumambulation) of the tree.

Google maps misguided me while returning to the main road. The area looked like a maze, where I returned to the same point twice after navigating through narrow roads!! I had to use my sense of direction to solve the maze problem!!

Trivial

We also visited the school (St. Charles school) that I studied and the house (Upper Hutta area) we had stayed for four years. I was visiting the school after 25 years and the house after 30 years!! It was a pleasant experience, and I was surprised to see that the place had not changed much in the last 2-3 decades, apart from an underpass to the railway line. I revisited my sweet memories of the childhood days.