Pooja in our Village.
We had a special family pooja at our village organized by our grandmothers. It also doubled up as one big family get-together. It was a great weekend exactly the way i had anticipated. Here’s a partial recount.
People get up as early at 3:00 in the morning to lay the kolam. The early morning chill, the calmness and Subrabatham playing mildly in the background can be sheer bliss.
The famous peepul tree outside the Perumal temple in Rettani. It’s an amazing feeling sitting underneath this tree during afternoons.
The apples of my eyes. I’m extremely close to my grandparents. Seen in this pic, from left to right. Hema Amma ( my Dad’s elder sister)- She is so close to me that i call her Amma instead of Athai. In the middle is my Dad’s mom who is a Cambridge graduate. In the right is my Mom’s mom who is extremely hardworking. She wakes up at 3:30 every morning!!
Pooja in progress. Seen in this picture is our big family.
At home, the temple priests and pambam musicians came a day earlier to handcraft the periyandavar God. The pooja is a two day long process and is very intricate and complex.
During the pooja, thanks to the captivating music and religious fervour, Pachamma, our houehold worker, had a bout of “Saami” and she started to violently dance like kaali and finally lost her conciousness. Just watching this can be a spine tingling experience.
The Gangaiamman temple where our Periyandavar family pooja was held.
Right next to the temple, the priests have made many small mud pyramids representing various Gods. The pooja went on for many hours with different abhishekams.
The famous Mailam temple is just a 20 mins drive from our village and we made a visit here. The temple is located on a small hill and the architecture inside is brilliant.
At the temple, Krithya, my daughter, found a small lamb to play with.
I’m mostly a jeans and shorts guy but when I go to my village, I always love to get into dothies. Ours is an agricultural family and we’ve been taught very young in our lives the duality of adapting to both city and village life.
The lady on the left is called Chakla and she has been a helper in our family for over 70 years. To her right is her daughter who also works in our home. Extremely loyal, caring and affectionate.
Mobile Phones are a misnomer. In my village, you should call them cable phones. Because the signals are so weak, an antenna has to be fixed on top of the house with a cable leading in to the house. Everytime the phone rings, you’ll need to fix your phone to this cable to get better signal !! 🙂
Krithya in our groundnut fields.
It’s always a pleasure to take bath in the “pumpset”.
