And Life Moves on.....
It is an interesting part of the year. The English New Year is round the corner. Margazhi - the month of devotion for the devout Hindus commences on Monday. I am reminded of my younger days, while I was still in school and when my parents had greater authority over my conduct and which they never hesitated to exercise.
My brother and I were woken up early in the morning, by about 4. After struggling in the toilet at a time totally strange to our body clocks and forced to take a cold bath, we would be hurried off to the Ganesha temple nearby to sing " Thirupavai" with about 400 other kids.
The kids, most of them from the slums near by, could never take a bath so early. Their motivation to be there- the promised gift at the end of the month and the "venpongal" given as prasad at the end of the singing.
About the singing itself, the lesser said the better. Thank God! We cremate our dead. Or else, the legendary musicians who established carnatic music's foundation and the Divine composer of Thirupavai- Andal ( who was incarnate of the Goddess Lakshmi and whose identity merged with the Lord Himself) would be turning in their graves. What an earth quake it would have been. When the last song is being sung, a group starts runnning towards the prasadam counter to get an unbeatable advantage in the queue.
Somewhere in the quest for these trivial pleasure the God and His divinity were somehow irrelevant.
posted by Neelakantan at
1:29 pm
4 Comments:
What is "venpongal"?
What is "prasad"? and "prasadam"?
;-)
11:02 pm
Many believe it is God in the form of Venpongal. Puts an altogether different spin on eating Venpongal at Andal Mess.
1:35 pm
dude, many people go to the temples practically for that reason alone. many a time, we folks rank a temple based on the quality and quantity of prasadam distributed.
why, even at tirumala, we all have so much fervour in collecting "laddu prasadam" while we all know full well that the laddu is just mass produced and has not strictly attained prasadam status.
11:11 pm
I am not very familiar with the ways prayers are conducted in a christian church. In Hindu prayers, we offer food articles as offerings. The essence of the food is taken by the Gods and the food is thereafter served to the devotees as " Prasad". Prasadam is the term used in southern India. It means the same. Venpongal or white pongal is a form of steamed rice mixed with liberal amounts of ghee ( melted butter) and embellished with roasted cashewnuts, pepper etc. In short it is very very tasty.
11:40 am
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