Drive-In Temples
You may have noticed vehicles in busy roads of Indian cities suddenly slowing down, with a distracted driver doing some hand gestures — which may involve touching their foreheads, kissing their own hands/fingers, leaving the steering wheel to hold hands in reverence, and so on. Two wheelers do that too, which could involve getting the helmet partially removed (if they wear one), followed by the hand antics. As a person who drives behind them, you then realize there is a temple in the direction of where their head turns. This might particularly happen on days of special significance like Mondays for Shiva temples, or Ekadashi for Vishnu temples, any day for Vinayaka, etc. The temple will anyway be teeming with people and even their exteriors would be busy with people clamoring to leave/pickup their footwear and getting a final glimpse of the God before they leave. People who don’t have the time / luxury to park and enter do the aforementioned antics sitting right in their vehicles.
Now, in one such instance of driving behind, I got this idea — “Drive In Temples”. Like you have food outlets that let you pick up your orders without getting out of the car, you could have temples that let you pray, get the powder/cream to apply on your forehead without getting out of your vehicle. This could reduce parking woes and all other antics. There will of course be a line up of cars to do this, and some will hog more time at the view/pickup point. Those are issues to be resolved. We can even avoid the stop totally and allow only a slowdown for the quick prayer. We will leave those to the local temple operator to handle. As a social behavior, we may need to figure how the footwear-removal exercise would work when you are inside the car. Maybe you slightly get your heel out of the shoes and it counts.
Get carnivas’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Just as I was about to file a patent on this, I did the prior research and found the concept exists — More in Western traditions though. Apparently, there are churches which operate like Drive-in movie theatres. Example Google tells me is: Daytona church in Florida. You park your car, sit within, and hear to sermons. And Google’s AI Overview says a church in Bangalore offered “Worship on Wheels” during the pandemic where you could park and pray — Not exactly what I suggest though. There are apparently “Wayside Shrines” in Europe (Dolomites, Google says) which have a concept very similar to what I propose — People slowdown to get a glimpse of the sacred icons, offer a quick prayer and move on, without ever getting out of the car. Sigh, can’t patent it after all.
But as a driver of a car which is behind a car whose occupants suddenly slow down to pray, would you like this? If you live near the Someshwara Temple adjacent to the NPS East school in the Chikkanayakkanahalli Road, (don’t) suggest this to your local corporator. Thank you very much.
