This is Giriraja as of August, 1999, but He hasn't always looked like this.
This is what Giriraja looked like last year. His nose ring was on the other side of his face and there were no colours, just plain tilaka. Giridhari and Chota Giri on either side didn't have names then (They were just "there") and I wasn't applying faces to Them. This picture was taken with my "old" digital camera.
In early March, 1999, I was visiting Vrindavan, India. It was there that I became inspired to start putting faces on my other two small Govardhan Silas for the first time. As soon as I started doing this, immediately
these other Silas started manifesting Their personality. Click
here to read the history of how I acquired these three Silas.
You can see from the picture that Giridhari (the small Sila on the left in this picture) had His face on one of His flat sides.
Giriraja's smile is crooked because there is a natural ridge on the stone that the tilak follows. Tilak is clay from Dwarka, India, that is mixed and reapplied to Giriraja every morning.
While in Vrindavan, I accidently dropped my old digital camera in Syama Kunda, near Govardhan Hill, while on a visit to Govardhan Hill. (Of all places to drop a camera!) This effectively ruined the camera. About a month later, when I was visiting New York, I purchased a new camera (Kodak DC260). This was the first picture I took of Giriraja with the new camera. The picture was taken at the Long Island temple, New York, in early May, 1999. By this time I had changed Giridhari's face to a different side, making one of the ridges in the stone His nose.
Giriraja has His devotees, and one of His biggest admirers is Madhumati devi dasi. Because of her enthusiasm to serve Giriraja, I began to send her e-mail with the daily pictures of these three Silas that I had taken with my new digital camera. This picture was taken at my mother's apartment in Connecticut during a visit there, not long after purchasing the camera.
Madhumati devi dasi started suggesting that Giridhari needed something on His head. She said He needed some jewels or a small crown or something. The problem was that Giridhari (this is the Sila on the left) is very small. So I started putting a little squiggly tilak mark on the top of His head. I also started using curly eyebrows.
Madhumati also suggested I start using more colours, and she also suggested through e-mail that I move Giridhari's eyes closer together (They are removed and re-affixed every morning with beeswax.)
This was an early attempt to use red die in some of the tilak that I was applying to these deities. Madhumati did not like the way Giriraja's smile came out on this day. She also started suggesting that Giriraja's nosering would be more proper on the other side of His face, and kept insisting I move Giridhari's eyes still closer together.
This is what Giriraja looks like as of today. Today I am using two other colours other than the plain tilak. Giridhari's eyes are indeed closer and look better. He has lots of dots and decorations on His forehead. Giriraja's nosering is on the other side of His face, and I've started using more curly smiles as well as the curley eyebrows.