Heaven on Earth: The Universe of Kerala’s Guruvayur Temple takes the reader into the heart of this complex universe, chronicling the temple’s myth and history, describing its rituals and beliefs, its traditional style of management, its festivals and patronage of Kerala’s ancient art forms, its elephants and, of course, the beliefs of all those who worship within its precincts. It is a book made possible both by the trust and willingness of people, including the temple priests, to share their knowledge, and by author-photographer Pepita Seth’s commitment to the project and her determination to represent the scope of the temple’s world.This remarkable and unique record is the outcome of 7 years of careful research enhanced by sensitive photographs that not only portray all aspects of life within the temple, but its atmosphere of intangible divinity.
Pepita Seth was born in London and grew up on a farm in Suffolk. Her career began in the cutting rooms, editing British and American documentaries and feature films-working with such directors as Stanley Donen, Otto Preminger, Tony Richardson and Ted Kotcheff. It was the chance discovery of her soldier great-grandfather’s 1857 diary which, in 1970, inspired her to make her first visit to India. In 1972, she returned to India, more specifically, to Kerala. From then on, between work assignments, she made regular visits to Kerala, finally basing herself in Thrissur where she now lives. By 1979, she had given up all film work and, driven by her passion and respect for the region’s culture and traditions, begun seriously photographing and writing about the rituals of Kerala’s Hindus. In 1981, she received official permission to enter Kerala’s temples-including Guruvayur Temple.
She has lectured extensively on Kerala’s traditions in India, Britain- at the British Museum and the Nehru Centre, and the United States-at the Smithsonian, Columbia and Barnard Universities. Exhibitions of her photographs have been held in India through the British Council, and in Britain and the United States under the aegis of Nikon House and Barnard University.
Her novel, The Spirit Land, was published in 1994, the year she began to focus on a single subject: the Theyyam rituals of Malabar. The 5 years she spent in northern Kerala resulted both in exhibitions-in Britain
and the United States-and the firm conviction that she would return for more intensive work.
In 2001, encouraged by the temple authorities, she began her research on Guruvayur Temple. Heaven on Earth: The Universe of Kerala’s Guruvayur Temple is the culmination of 7 years of research and documentation-an experience Pepita Seth acknowledges as having changed her life.
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