Madipakkam is a fast developing Suburb of Chennai. Situated close to Madipakkam Bus Terminus on the busy main road is the Odheeswarar Temple -- also known as Vedhapureeswarar Temple. The Goddess here is Arulmigu Vedapureeswari
Mavadibagam is the old name of the place . It is said that when Kanchi Maha Periyava was passing through this area, He stopped when he came near the Sthala Viruksham -அரசு, வேம்பு, வில்வ மரம் இணைந்தது--under which the Sivalinga Thirumeni was seated in the open along with Nandhi. The rest of what should have been a grand temple was reduced to rubbles due to neglect over the centuries. The Maha Swamy told the local devotees about the importance of this 1000 year old temple and advised them to rebuild the same.
We are informed that with the Divine Blessings of Maha Periyava, when the renovation work commenced, money started flowing in for the project and the work of temple consecration was completed in the late '90s.
Shri Jayaprakash, a Senior Manager in Canara Bank and one of the members of the managing committee of this temple had invited us to do the cleaning and white washing work . Accordingly we had taken up the uzhavarappani of this temple on 25.08.2013, with a workforce of more than 60 volunteers.
The inner walls of the temple have been beautifully done with oil painting of the images of the various Gods. Therefore our work was confined to white-washing the ceiling, a tough task indeed, considering its height of 13 feet. Besides, we had also used the aluminium paint for the ventilator grills and enamel paint for the Swamy Sannadhi.
The huge tree atop the roof of the praharam had to be trimmed to ensure that its wild growth did not create any structural weakness on the roofing and also on the gopurams.. A group of about thirty volunteers were deployed for this purpose. Braving thorny growths and overhanging television cables, they struggled hard for more than four hours to clear the wild growth.
The usual cleaning of pooja items, polishing the Utsava idols and the Kodi maram , cleaning and water-washing the praharam with high pressure compressor was also done.
Initially, we though that the temple being a small one, we could finish all the work by 03.30pm. How wrong we were! The work was really huge and we could finish only by 07.00pm.
We started a practice of explaining one Song l from a Thirumurai by any
one of our members during each Uzhavarapani. It started in Nungambakkam
in June 2013. Then Nemili, SEED and now in Odheeswarar Temple too. Smt
Kalyani explained one Thirumandhiram to our volunteers.
Click Here To See Additional Photos
No comments:
Post a Comment