The basement says suburbia: spacious, new, several weekend-projects shy of being fully finished.
The basement also says India. For four years now, this is where Salt Lake's Hindu community has come to pray on Saturday mornings and special holidays. At the far end of the room there is an altar to Sri Ganesha, the elephant-face god, and on the walls there are posters of deities. For several years, also, the room next door has served as the Hindu community center.A basement is a modest place for worship and gathering. But the Hindu community has grander plans. So, on a recent Saturday evening, Wasatch Front Asian Indian families and their American friends gathered at a gala fund-raiser at the Salt Lake Hilton. The ballroom was filled with beautiful saris; the menu included mango mousse in chocolate shells; the honored guests included Sens. Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett.
The Indian community has been planning and fund raising for several years now. The goal is Utah's first permanent Hindu temple and India Cultural Center, both to be located on a four-acre parcel in South Jordan. Groundbreaking for the first phase -- what the annual report calls a "modest-sized temple" -- will be some time this year. Phase 2 is the India Cultural Center, which will cost about $600,000 and is slated for completion in 2001. Phase 3 will include the temple's expansion and "architectural embellishment."
The four-acre parcel in South Jordan is, according to the annual report, "a perfect rectangle facing east" and is therefore "very auspicious" for a temple.
The temple will be called the Sri Ganesha Hindu Temple of Utah, named for the elephant-god who is one of many Hindu manifestations of the Bhrama, or Supreme Being. "Ninety-nine percent of Hindus worship Ganesha," explains Indra Neelameggham. "Ganesha is always the first deity that is invoked, because Ganesha is the god who removes obstacles."
The statue of Ganesha that now sits in the Neelameggham basement was carved in India and was donated by the Hindu temple in Kauai, Hawaii, to the Wasatch Front Hindu community in 1995. Last fall the statue was raised and reseated on a specially made pedestal that makes it easier to perform Abhisheka, a ritual in which Ganesha is bathed.
After the new temple is built, the statue will be placed in the center of the temple, with the statues of several other deities -- Durga, Shiva, Yagna, Lakshmi, Balaji -- placed around it.
"There is one God but so many forms," explains Shyamala Chivukula, who often officiates as priestess during the Saturday morning worship services and classes. God is manifested in everything around us and also in the form of deities, she explains. For Hindus, Jesus is one such deity.
Hindus take on particular deities as their own, she says. In her own home she has a shrine to Durga, the wife of Shiva, also known as the mother goddess.
On a recent Saturday morning, the prayer class sat on the floor and chanted "The 1,001 Names of God," a 30-minute prayer recited in Sanskrit. The men and women, most of them university students, also chanted a prayer in the name of Lord Rama.
Following the prayers, the group stood in two lines at the foot of the altar while Chivukula waved an oil lamp in front of Sri Ganesh. Symbolically, explains Chivukula, this is an effort to get "from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge." The class then walked in a circle around the shrine, symbolizing the attempt to leave worldly considerations behind, and then stood in line to receive a few drops of holy water flavored with cardamon and saffron.
"I call it gourmet water," explained Neel Neelameggham with a chuckle.
As a final ritual, fruit that had been left as an offering to Sri Ganesh was passed around for everyone to eat. Hindus come to worship, explains Indra Neelameggham, but they also like to socialize.
There are some 300 Hindu families and about 200 Hindu university students along the Wasatch Front, most of them originally from India. In Utah, the total Asian Indian population is about 3,500; 70 percent of adults of Indian origin living in Utah have a college education, and "a high percentage" of the Indian community hold post-graduate and doctoral degrees, according to Dinesh Patel, who spearheaded the fund-raising gala for the India Cultural Center.
Like other immigrant and ethnic communities, Utah's Asian Indians hope to keep their culture alive in Utah. Without a community or cultural center of their own, Wasatch Front Indians have had to rent other spaces, sometimes LDS stake centers. The new community and cultural center will be a "cultural enclave," says Indra Neelameggham, a place for weddings, festivals and music programs. It will also include a library, classrooms and a kitchen. And, because this is also America, a big-screen TV "for the youngsters to watch the Super Bowl."
You can reach Elaine Jarvik by e-mail at jarvik@desnews.com