Year 7 students visit Shri Swaminarayan Mandir

On Friday 9 June Year 7 students visited the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (Hindu temple) in Neasden as part of a term of study on Hindu beliefs and practice. The group was welcomed to the Mandir and Haveli (cultural centre) by the same guide who has welcomed our Year 7 students for a number of years, and who amused the girls by sharing his anti-aubergine views (not for the first time) – he explained that Hindus are vegetarian and “all you really need to do is to cook up a lovely curry with all the wonderful vegetables – except the horrid hard purple ones”! The girls were struck by the remarkable and beautiful architecture; the Mandir was the first to be built according to traditional architectural requirements in Europe, constructed in three years, from 3,000 tonnes of Bulgarian limestone and over 2,000 tonnes of Italian and Indian marble. All of the stone was carved in India, by more than 1,500 craftsmen, before being shipped back to Neasden for construction. It was a lovely sunny day so the group had packed lunches outdoors, and also saw some of the preparations being made for the Mandir to receive the first visit from the present spiritual leader of their particular tradition of Hinduism. He was to arrive the week after the visit, and they were anticipating welcoming (and feeding) possibly as many as 7,000 visitors a day during the week of his visit!