The village of Janwada in Telangana’s Rangareddy district, located 30 kilometres from Hyderabad, looks like a human heart on Google Maps, with its roads and bylanes resembling arteries and veins. Nestled among corporate farmhouses; film shooting sets; and lush tennis, cricket, and equestrian clubs, it is part of a plush area that realtors passionately label ‘the golden triangle of Hyderabad’. It is also a 15-minute drive from the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority’s (HMDA) much-vaunted ₹100-crore-per-acre Neopolis layout, a commercial-residential-retail hub. Luxury SUVs and vanity vans zip through this Hyderabad-Shankarpally road, along which Janwada village is located.
Janwada was to begin its weeklong festivities for the consecration ceremony of the newly-built Ram temple starting February 17, but the entry to the village, through high wooden arches and scaffoldings is now blocked by the police. The LED panels of the village deities remain unlit. The procession of the idols and dedication of the temple’s shikara (crown of the tower), dhvajastambha (flagstaff), scheduled to take place across the week have been put off as well. So have the Bodrai festivities that take place annually at the village’s central stone, around which the homes grow. The village’s two churches have also remained closed since Ash Wednesday last week, the first day of the 40-day period of Lent (preparatory period leading up to Easter).
