Om Banna
— a roadside shrine built around a motorcycle.
Not only on a wall.
“A roadside temple on National Highway 62, about fifty kilometres south of Jodhpur. The shrine holds a 1988 Royal Enfield Bullet 350, registration RNJ 7773, which belonged to Om Singh Rathore (Om Banna), who died on this stretch of road that December. Drivers and bikers stop to garland the bike, leave a bottle, and ask for safe passage onward. Trucks slow down without being told.
Om Banna, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The shrine stands beside the Pali road, National Highway 62, near the village of Chotila about fifty kilometres south of Jodhpur in central Rajasthan. The surrounding country is the eastern edge of the Marwar plain: flat scrub, khejri trees, the Aravalli hills low on the southern horizon. The temple complex grew up around a single roadside tree where the accident happened in December 1988, and is now a walled compound with a marble platform, a resident priest, daily offerings, and parking for tour buses pulling off the highway.
The object of veneration is a 1988 Royal Enfield Bullet 350, registration number RNJ 7773, which belonged to Om Singh Rathore of Chotila village. He died on the night of December 2, 1988, when the bike struck a tree on this curve. The story locally told is that police impounded the motorcycle to the Pali station the following morning, and that it was found back at the accident site by the next sunrise, three times, until they left it where it stood. The bike sits today inside a glass-fronted shrine.
The shrine is open from before dawn until late evening, every day, with no admission charge. Most visitors are travelling drivers who stop for five minutes for a coconut, a few coins, sometimes a small bottle of liquor placed at the bike's wheel. A small market of dhabas, garland sellers, and helmet vendors has grown along the roadside. Sunday mornings and Hindu festival days bring the heaviest crowds; weekday mid-mornings are quietest, with the desert wind moving the temple flags in long, slow passes.