The Lonely Lord Brahma

You would think that Lord Brahma would be pretty well respected around the Hindu world, being that he was singlehandedly responsible for creating the universe and all.

It is quite unfortunate, then, that our next stop, Pushkar, happens to be one of the few places in the world, if not the only place, where Brahma has a temple dedicated to him. I suppose there is some solace in the fact that Pushkar, surprisingly, turned out to be 2007 hippie central. I had heard that Varanasi didn't have many left, and my visits in the past to Rishikesh only turned up a handful, so I wondered where they all went. Right. Found them. At least Brahma has company.

As it turns out, Brahma was supposed to get married in Pushkar to Saavitri. As the story goes, Saavitri took too long to get ready (she's marrying the creator of the universe, do you blame her? I'd wanna look good too!). But since the auspicious time for marriage was passing, Brahma, in a hurry, picked another woman, Gaayatri, to marry. Saavitri shows up to find out that Brahma has gone and married another woman. Angry at this injustice (she went through all that trouble getting ready, for... um... Brahma's sake!), she curses Brahma that he will never be worshipped anywhere but Pushkar.

It seems that her curse came true - the most number of people I ever saw in that temple at a time was about thirty. But that made darshan and puja of Lord Brahma quite enjoyable. No pandas, no pressure, just prayer.