Agatheeswarar Thirukkovil, Nungambakkam

Painting the main door of the Praharam

The annual Brahmotsavam festival is  always celebrated at Nungambakkam Agatheeswarar Temple   in a very grand manner.  In connection with this festival which is going to be held for the current year  from July 07 to 19,  2013, our team of volunteers took up the assignment of giving the Temple a festive look  through white-washing and painting.

After returning from Innambur, our coordinator Shri Ramachandran, visited this temple to make a study of the work requirements.  Accordingly, the Hereditary Trustees of the Temple, Shri Kalyana Raghavan & Shri Radhakrishnan made available all the material required much in advance.

Our team members started assembling from 7.30am onwards and within one hour the number of volunteers swelled to more than 70.  Our work mainly  involved painting and white washing the walls of the main praharam and also the  Sannadhis of  Adhikara Nandhi,  Vinayagar, Balasubramaniar, Durga-Lakshmi-Saraswathi,  Kasi Viswanathar, Annapurneswari, Bairavar, Navagrahams,  besides the Yagasalai and the madapalli.

The painting of grill gates at the entrance and white washing  the entire stretch of wall from the main road to the temple Rajagopuram  was also done.

The usual cleaning of  the inner praharam using water jet was also done.  Besides, lady volunteers cleaned the Pooja Vessels and the Thiruvasi of various Sannadhis to give them a bright look.  By 6 pm we packed up for the day.

On Completion

Shri Madanagopal, Executive Officer of the Temple, was very appreciative of our efforts.  He interacted with all the volunteers  and  gave us quite a  few valuable tips and suggestions for our future uzhavarappani work.  He also duly invited  all of us for the Brahmotsavam function

Mayil Anna with the Temple Gurukkal,Trustees and a few of our volunteers

This time we had a very  popular personality, who visited us during our work, remained with us for about an hour and encouraged us throughout.  He is none other than Shri Mayilsamy, who is well known to the Tamils as a comedy actor.  But not many know that he is very pious and an ardent devotee of Lord Arunachaleswara.  We have seen him involving himself in Annadhanam activities at Thiruvannamalai on all Pournami days.  When we had gone to Thiruvannamalai for the Chitra Pournami festival(Refer our earlier post Chitra Pournami) we had befriended him.  At that time we invited him to visit us during one of our programmes to  have a first hand idea of our field work and  he readily dropped in despite his busy schedule.

We have been regulars at this temple for the last four years.  But this year we were very much pained to see the near-dry condition of the temple tank, which contained very  little water that too only in small puddles. No doubt, the scorching heat in Chennai is continuing for more than a month after the end of Agni Nakshatram and this temple tank, which has been serving as a recharge point for the  wells in the surrounding localities has taken its toll.  We only pray that Varuna Baghawan fills up this tank at least to a reasonable level within the next 10 days so that all the dry patches vanish, when the festivities begin.

A section of our volunteers

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