The Mandir

Welcome to the temple or mandir, as we call our house of prayer. Come in. Please take off your shoes first, this is a special place. And we want to keep it clean and neat as well.

When you come in you can ring the bell, you can do the same when you leave. The priest or pandit rings the bell at the beginning and the end of a prayer. We call a prayer a puja. A temple is a place for praying. You can do this at any moment of the day.

It's not very quiet here, is it? Except for the bell you can hear people praying, singing and reading from the sacred scripts. There are different altars here, like in most big mandirs. During praying you can walk past these altars. You can give an offering, a prasada, to the gods. This can be flowers, fruit and water. Maybe you can smell the incense that is burnt as an offering? At festivals a lot of people assemble at the mandir. It can be very crowded then. There is special puja, and there is music and dance and nice food .....