The Lotus Temple

Excursion to places of worship

The Lotus temple is considered an icon of peace and acentuates the skyline of our historical capital. On 12 September, 2012, Pre-prihouse visited the Lotus Temple as a part of the Excursion to places of worship.

The children were excited to be going there, as they had not been before. They had been told about it in class and the pictures shown to them made them curious. We were greeted very warmly by the volunteers at the Temple, who we realised were not Indian!

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The volunteer- guides explained to us the significance of the building. They said that a lotus blossom brings beauty and peace wherever it blooms; besides the petals are like the varied paths taken by us, people to realise God. The main area houses a large auditorium with excellent acoustics, where we were told that we must be very silent. This, as you will agree, is a tall order when you have 200 little ones to manage!

We took our places on the chairs inside and the vollunteers sang us a beautiful prayer. The chanting was awesome and the children seemed quite struck. They were pin-drop silent! Our hearts were bursting with pride for them. We walked around the building so that the children realised the perspective of the lotus design of the structure. Soon we were headed back. On coming back we did a colouring worksheet, as well as a free-hand drawing of what we had seen as a recapitulation activity. We then sang the prayer as well to refresh our memory of it. The Prayer was:

Guide me lord, you are my heart you are my strength, you are my hope. Teach me Lord, and guide my way I love you more from each passing day.

For a long time after the event, we, teachers were left wondering, how we managed to have our children maintain pin- drop silence at the temple for all of five minutes. Entirely by the Grace Of God, we surmised!

As told by Ms. Viji Vasudev, HT, Pre-primary department.

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