Saraswati and Raja Ravi Varma

I learned today that there is only one temple dedicated to Saraswati, goddess of learning and the arts, in Tamil Nadu. According to this article, there was a festival there recently -- at the Maha Saraswathi Ambal temple at Koothanur.

People offer pencils and notebooks to the goddess, get them blessed and take them back home.

I've always liked the idea of a goddess of learning. Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906 -- from the neighbouring South Indian state of Kerala) painted a picture of Saraswati -- I bought a lithograph of it from a sidewalk vendor when I first came to India as a student.

You can see many Ravi Varma paintings here.

(Ramesh says there ought to be a god of dreams -- to bring sleep to insomniacs, and to apportion dreams from his stock of them. I imagine this god as being like a pharmacist, his shop crammed with bottles and jars of dream images, concocting potions for you at your request.)