Brihannala

Kamadhenu Temple

Brihi reached the Kamadhenu temple area as the sun had begun it's descent in the western sky. After Malini and twins left, they waited and made their way towards the city with a small group of potters who were visiting the market to sell their goods.

As they entered the city, they found it quite crowded as today was a market day and people from all nearby villages came to sell their goods. Matsya had good trading establishment with all the neighbouring kingdoms and hence it was also a center of getting information of what is happening around the world.

Brihi, Vallaba and Kanka agreed to meet at the temple and left their separate ways. Brihi had gone around the city but couldn't find any suitable jobs. Since it was more of a trading kingdom rather than a warrior nation, the training institutes or jobs in infarmary are very limited.

Brihi decided to call it a day and decided to go back to meet his brothers. When he reached the temple, he saw two gigantic elephant sculptures at the entrance, followed by a huge doorway, the gates were open and the doors were decorated with hundreds of bells, which kept ringing with every gush of breeze.

He was mesmerized by the beautiful carvings, the artist in him fell in love with this place immediately. As he walked further in, he saw artistically planned landscape, the gardens, the fountains and as he walked further in he saw towards his left a big pool with fish head on one side pouring water from their mouth, the water seems to be continuously fed and redirected back to the river flowing outside the eastern city wall. Attached to it were bath houses with smaller pools for people to take a holy dip or wash their feet before entering the temple.

Brihi took a bath and wrapped the dhoti and shawl he purchased in the market and entered the temple area. It was a magnificent site to behold as he saw a beautiful white marbel stairs leading up to a eight pillar supported structure, each pillar was situated in each of the eight directions and sunlight hit each pillar and reflected upon its gems indicating which part of day it is. The top of the temple was decorated with stone carvings telling a story of Kamadhenu and as he reached the inner temple he saw the beautiful four poster structure made of gold, silver and gems with a small tomb on top, as he went around the inner structure doing a parikrama, he saw that the inner statue of Goddess Kamadhenu is surrounded by glass.

Goddess Kamadhenu's status is that of a cow, with carvings of all the Hindu Gods on her. It is the reason that cows are considered auspicious because all the dieties live in them, but technically every part of cow is worshipped out of gratitude because from it comes not just milk but even it's biowaste has medicinal values thought Brihi.

What surprised him more was that when he looked at the Goddess from whichever side, he found her looking at him. Whoever designed that temple was a pure genius thought Brihi and it reminded him of his home which was a magical wonder in itself, purely based on civil engineering.

He reached the front, took the blessings of the Goddess and walked to collect prasad. He would be meeting his siblings at the northern part of this temple area which has a small satram and annadam was also happening in that area today to feed all the devotees and travellers who passed by.

(*dhoti is a rectangular white cloth usually wrapped around lower body as a pant, *parikrama means taking a turn around the temple, *satram is resting area for travelling devotes)

The sun was too low in the sky now and temple lamps have started to glow as Brihi spotted Vallaba in the far corner of the satram, as he reached there he heard Malini's voice, "I aced the makeup contest, we were given palace maids whom we had to doll up and luckily I got to work with Lalita as she referred me, the Queen and Princess were very much impressed with me and they asked me to join from tomorrow", she said with the excitement of a kid who had won a medal. "As I was getting ready to take my leave I heard the queen was looking for a dancer and I suggested Brihi's name, but... ", hearing his name Brihi felt his heart pick up a beat,  Malini when excited about something always caused him trouble, "But what... " he asked coming out of the shadows. Malini looked down at her feet slightly embarrassed and it made Brihi's brows furrow, "Well, since it's a dance tutor for the princess, obviously a man cannot teach her, so I told them you are neither a man nor a woman", she finished followed by silence.