![\"singapore's](\"http:\/\/www.shekharkapur.com\/blog\/archives\/singapore%27s%20red%20light%20district.jpg\")
\nThat is not my picture of Geylang. I picked it up from google images (and hope the author does not mind). But passed the place with my friend, Pratik Bose, on our way to the Ramakrishna Mission Temple in Singapore. Pratik is an ardent follower and I love to visit places of worship of all faiths all over the world. Something about the energy and vibrations that people of ardent faith leave behind that I find energizing. Funny thing about Singapore. this city of malls, order and discipline, turned into something that felt like a suburb of Buenos Aires. Chaotic, streetwise and interesting. And Singapore’s most interesting recent films at Cannes was a docudrama based in Geylang. Street life makes the most interesting films. Pratik, who is Bengali told me this :
\n“The clay for the image of Mother Durga which is made for the Durga Puja festival is often mixed with clay from various sources to prepare it for worship. One custom is to collect soil from a prostitute?s house in the red light district and add it to the mix.. The idea is that the divine mother is present in each woman on earth and each woman is potentially the divine mother, with this theme in mind, even the prostitute?s soil constitutes the mother?s image which is worshipped during Puja for sake of completion of the earthly image we create for the worship”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"