One of the most splendid temples in India, ‘Shree Aadya Katyayini temple’, popularly known as ‘Chattarupur Temple’ is located four kms away from the very famous Qutub Minar in South Delhi. This temple stands as the ideal epitome of the creations of architecture of the modern era. It was constructed and designed under the passionate guidance of Mr. Baba ji, popular for his ideology to remove (interesting!) superstition and ignorance from the society in 1974. Though the devotion is the main drive for the normal throng of visitors, the art itself is a unique attraction worth noting.
The front view of the temple presents itself as a palace with its bottom half and as a temple with its upper half. It stands around 80 feet tall occupying around 20,000 sqft of land. The exterior of the lower half hints the further split into three floors. It has around ten windows enclosed with an edifice with no walls but only four pillars. With the design on top of each of the doors and windows, it seemed as if serpents are guarding the palace. The main door, two floors tall, made of teak wood is in the inverted U shape with its surface carved out with chakras (stars with astronomical significance) and open lotuses facing the entrant. This design is omnipresent in the temple on all walls, borders, doors and ceilings but not floors. The pillars of the structure have a step based design with high density at the bottom and top, but nearly plain surface in the middle. This is treated as a typical north Indian style of art in pillar design. Same style is observed inside the building. The parapet wall on the terrace marks the separator of the upper and lower halves and is indeed a row of perfect circular lotus flowers facing outside with no charkas around them. The upper half mainly constitutes three main hoods of the temple ; two of which are smaller than the centre piece. Horizontal lining on these structures is symmetrical along its length. On the roof, we can observe many edifices with only pillars. Their hoods resemble the hat of Kabir. The water tank like structure has its exterior carved with the densest design of the temple. It looks as if the surface is occupied by a healthy and strong climber with no void.
Entering the temple we see two main pillars on each side of the gate and they have treasury boxes carved out of marble. The immaculate marble and sprawls constitute the majority of the construction material. The floor is stuffed with black, orange and white marbles. The building shines away only white colour. Apart from the flora exposed outside the building, the interior compound of various smaller temples alongside the main one, it exposes the fauna too. Elephants, lions and serpents emboss themselves from the carvings with all the symmetry and beauty. Each of the tips of the temple tops are decorated with gold coated caps. Distinctly, the main temple top is completely coated with gold, not just the tip. This coating generally doesn’t have any carvings on it. The carvings on the flag post, which is present at the centre of all temples looks elegant with its complete marble structure, lotus and chakra designs on each of the faces of its square structure converging into a single point as it moves to its top.
There is no distinction shown in case of the interior of the temple. Starting with the main entrance doors, borders, walls where the idols are placed and the barricades are all silver coated. But they all have a dull look due to the lack of polish in recent times. So silver dominates the interior and gold exterior. The floor inside any temple seems to be a set of tiny marbles and is just pure white. No complex designs on the floors. But the ceiling still has the attractive designs of lotuses. The inner walls have a unique design found nowhere else in the compound. Bells along with the chains they hang from the ceiling were carefully carved out. No colouring is seen in these temples, except one, where in the idol is replaced biannually. Yet these designs are very clear, owing to their emboss. As said earlier lions are carved not just anywhere, but on the walls behind the idols. And serpents are present only on the pillars in the middle of the halls inside temples. These pillars are in fact further split into four pillars with sufficient plain space left between them. These carving on these tiny sub pillars look as if the serpents circled along the pillar starting from the bottom to the top, leading to a curved and slant lining along its length. This majorly contributes to the art in the interior. And the silver coating present inside the temple is nowhere plain, in contrast to the gold coating outside. There is an evident expression of coexistence between flora and fauna in their design. A blind touch of the silver surface will let you feel as if you are touching a hardened but dense leaves with serpents and lions all over.
In a sense, the art is homogenous and symmetric in the temple. It promotes the coexistence of humans and nature. The idols are one part. The other is the nature. There is an inner meaning that nature protects the idols, which we care. And so the inner inference is that we protect nature in return. The art in this temple is one of its kind and has a deep thinking behind its art.
