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Many years ago when I visited an old 11th century temple near my home town in a rural village I was very much disturbed by the inscription of names of the people on the beautiful walls of the temple. Incidentally this happened well before we got independence, around 1940s. The temple is now well protected by archeology department but the damage was done, long ago, at least that is what I thought when I visited the temple many years ago. I did not even open my camera bag then to photograph these otherwise beautiful temple walls.
A month ago I visited this place again. This time I went there to photograph those inscription of the people who made themselves immortal by carving their names on the walls.
This time I had a different thought. Why would a king build a temple?
There could be many reasons, devotion being just one of them. Little bit of searching the google gives many answers - temples were symbol of their valor of winning a war, they were often built to make their name immortal in the history of the mankind, temples served as significant social platform, temples/monuments were built to remember the near and dear ones of the kings and queens and this list goes on. Of course one of the reason is also to express their devotion and religious standings but then people who devoted themselves fully also built 'temple' under the trees this way. Of course no one knows who made them. That was not the objective, just the devotion was.
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Summary being, the reasons go well beyond just the spiritual attitude of kings and queens who built them. Now, poor Girija and Jayamma could not have built a temple. Yet they were humans with the same basic instincts as of those kings who wanted to stay immortal. Girija and Jayamma too wanted to live for ever, if not at least their names. From this perspective the scribbles on walls appeared more like a philosophical study of human nature. I am not at all justifying their act but to me it is an interesting study of raw human behaviour.
As a nature photographer I am undecided between quarrying stones/mountains and building a 'work of art' vs. leaving it as is and worshiping the mountain of stones.
Like Girija and Jayamma, this potter wasp does not know it is building its home on a 'work of art' of another species in nature. It also wants to ensure its progeny continues..
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It appears mother Nature provides space for living and ego of all, including us, the Nature Photographers. After all it is Nature's own creation!! Seeing it in a perspective may help at times.