Puri is a very popular destination in India because of various reasons. Apart from the famous pligrimiage location for Hindus The clean and mesmirizing sea beach at puri is one of the other major attraction that pull lot of tourist. At the same time Puri is famous for Shankha (conch shell) market. It has a variety of conch shell selling at many location. During my last trip to Puri, I was making the most of the travel by continously spending the time at the beaches. During the first evening while walking the crowded beaches among the cacophony of tourists, fishermen, divers and horse-riders, we heard the unmistakable sounds of a conch shell being blown, which pulled our attention to the vendor selling shankha. There were plenty of them, which make me to explore the other variety and ended up an array of store on the street.
Puri is one of the few beaches where big sized conch shells (Shankha) are available. Shankha is a wonderful natural gift to mankind. I belive, every household has a piece of shankha at their worship place. It is blown with mouth to produce heavy and distinctive sound, considered to be very auspicious and soul awakening. If we listen it very closely, then we will notice that the Shankha sound symbolizes “Oum” the first word of pious Gayatri Mantra. However, looking at the steep demand, many retailer has made artificial product too. So to avoid being chested we moved towards the street to lay hand on any good store.
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We were really surprised to find rhe entire street is filled up with the shankha. We went to the road near to thentemple area , and every other vendor on the street are selling the shankha. Each of them of differrnt shape, size and color. It was pretty difficult to choose the original of all. Making them easily available on roads does raises doubts. But each of them looks fantastic and authentic.
They are the jewels of the sea. Keeping and blowing of Shankha marks the beginning of any sacred rituals or ceremony. This is actually an ancient practice, followed till now. It is one of the beautiful creation of Mother Nature, obtained from a sea-snail. As per my knowledge, every beach citynis popular for the inttinsic shankha quality. Our search for original and high quality of shankhs took us to one of the road side stores. They have all variety of them displayed on the walls.
The store owner was perfect in selling. Knowing our less understanding on the various sgankhs, he told us some useful facts. Shankha can be distinguish, based on the direction of coiling. There are generally two varieties - “Dakshinavarta” and “Vamavarta”. The later being the most commonly available at sea beaches. I asked him to show us the biggest in their storr and they handed us this big mouth Shankha.
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Bigger than our palm, it took us a good amount of effort to blow air into it. We never blew such a big one. But after many attempts, we managed to squeeze the sound from it. It was not so heavy but enough that may give pain of holded for longer time.
Many people believes that sound of Shankha removes all ill spirits and germs and creates a positive vibration and divine atmosphere. Many of you might have notice few of god or goddess holding shankha in their hands. Shankha is also considered to be a great healer. It is believed that blowing air with mouth into the Shankha with rhythm, one can control the breathing system. This is what makes it an important gift of thr nature. It is also true that not everyone can blow the perfect sound from the shankha. It requires a good practices and art to know how to blow the air into it. We were captivated with the numerous shankha available in that store. Each of them were eye catching and too attractive.
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As we were caught up with shankha, we missed to talk about the other items at the store. Shankha has touched every artistic expression. skilled artisans also carve various artefacts, highly commercialized selling articles. The store also houses a besutiful mirror carved with sea shells and also many other home decoration items, solely made up of sea shells.
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Puri is not only about conch shell or shankha bit people have the other option too. Taking home some commercialized decorative items. It was a wonderful and knowledgeable trip that strengthen our understanding on the conch shell. Typically, we unable to explore them, but having a big market simply pulled our attraction and spent a good amount of time in the shankha / conch store.