Tirutani temple
It was my prayer to visit all the six abodes of Lord Muruga after our marriage. As it was getting delayed to accomplish it, we decided to start off as soon as possible and all of a sudden on a Saturday, we planned to visit Tirutani the next day (Sunday) as it’s the nearest one from our place and booked a train. The train was at 6.30 in the morning and so we had to leave home by 5.30. We booked a cab and reached the station. The travel wasn’t very tiring as it’s only about two hours and we slept for a long time during the journey.
The temple was more like a business place than a temple. There were specific auto rickshaws to reach there and they all demanded the same charge. Having nothing else to do, we boarded an auto to the temple. The moment we got down from the auto, two or three people surrounded us to buy flowers and small statues of Lord Muruga. Irritated by that, we shook head to those people and reached the temple entrance. We bought a set of pooja items with coconut, flowers, and banana and went to the temple. Unexpectedly it was Kirithigai (an auspicious day for Muruga) and so it was crowded with people. There was a long queue and we looked for the special queue for which we have to pay money. As the special was also as long as the general one, we preferred to wait in the general queue. We stood in the queue for about an hour and as we were approaching the center place, there was a person sitting on the left side with some leaves in a small plastic bag. He was shouting to the crowd that whoever bought the coconut for pooja must also present vilvam leaves and each packet costs Rs.10. This is daylight robbery in my opinion. God is not going to say ‘no’ if we offer only the coconut. We didn’t have a choice and has to buy those leaves too. When we went inside the pundit who does pooja was demanding for money and only if we put he’s giving us the holy ash. Before he gave, he said ‘podunga, thatula pathu rooba podunga’ (put 10 rupees on the plate). Not only at the main God, but also at all God statues. Irritated with this we walked out of the central place still holding the offerings in our hands not knowing what to do.
We went out to find that a person stands there to get break coconuts and give us one-half of it. No wonder he was also demanding money. It was shocking for me to see that the vilvam leaves that we give them are again sent back to the same store without even opening the cover. They don’t even take pains for gathering the leaves, but they just circulate the old ones. What a comfortable business!
The prasadham sold there were also costly but of poor quality. We bought laddu and milagu vadai as it was our lunch time and had to eat something. We ate a little and returned from that place by an auto rickshaw again and came back to railway station. We got the train and returned to Chennai that evening. The return journey was tiring, maybe because we were already tired or because of the rush in the train.
Overall the trip was just a change from our monotonous life but as a temple, we just didn’t like it.
