TN Tour 2: Panguni Uttiram

We had never heard the words ‘panguni uttiram’ before this. We were making hotel bookings and a chatty manager of a Palani hotel told us he was so sorry he couldn’t take our reservation, they were full up because of panguni uttiram. What’s that, I asked him. Oh, a very important festival in Tamil Nadu with special significance to Muruga, he told us. We looked at the panchanga for the first time then, and found that the full moon was to fall on 18^th March. Our plans had formed suddenly – Sadhguru had left for the Caribbean on 5^th March and we had given ourselves a couple of days to chart out the itinerary, pack and make arrangements. A purely practical plan without any reference to auspicious days or anything.

Palani was already special to us for a few reasons, so we readjusted our plans slightly. Since we had both been to Madurai in the past few years, we decided to skip the overnight stay there and head straight from Rameshwaram to Palani. It was a longish haul but we thought it would be the perfect place to be at on the auspicious Purnima.

Turns out, the festivities for panguni uttiram aren’t just on the full moon day, but occupy the entire ‘paksha’ or waxing moon phase leading up to it. In fact, precisely the period we were to roam Tamil Nadu, hopping from temple to gorgeous temple.

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We got the perfect ringside view of the festivities at Kanchi. We trundled off by auto to Ekambareshwara only to find the doors barred. The god was out visiting – the utsava murti had been taken out for a procession. As to where, the details escape me now but Kanchi is known as the city of a thousand temples: through this fortnight, the deities were all out in street processions, in a complex schedule of visits to other deities before they returned to their own abodes. Our evening call on Ekambareshwara didn’t yield glimpse of him, but it was richly rewarded by way of a wonderful mela (a 13-day affair, I understand) at the temple. Bright sparkling lights, milling crowds, food of various kinds, a cultural show featuring (some rather good) Bharatanatyam performances by a series of promising youngsters and troupes… it was heady. 

 

In Chidambaram, we were waiting to see the final aarti and puja where Nataraja is put to bed. We stood first attentively, then restively and then all of us sat down altogether while the priests dawdled here and there. Muruga of the ancillary temple was out on a social visit and till HE returned to the temple complex, Shiva couldn’t be closed, see? We finally walked back to our hotel by almost midnight, having missed dinner but fortified by a banana and a mouthful of prasadam.

Similar scenes everywhere: Srirangam was bedecked, in Kumbakonam, we caught the train of Lord Sarangapani as he was taken with pomp to his Devi’s shrine and back. Things really started to heat up as we reached Rameshwaram. Each village set out on its own procession to the nearest temple of significance. Drumbeats everywhere, crawling traffic honking through large dancing processions, men with sacred ash smeared on their foreheads, vels pierced through their cheeks, trucks and gear being prepared for men to undertake parava kavadi …. 

Photo: G Karthikeyan

 

The actual day in Palani was simply electric – wave after wave of devotees came, carrying decorated kavadis, bearing water that they’d consecrated for 40 days for Muruga’s abhishekam (one man generously gave us some teertham to sip at the temple), women, girls decked up in their best finery, carrying pots of milk and water, pulsating drums non-stop.

It was an exhilarating atmosphere to be caught up in.

TN Tour 1: The Obligatory Grand Tour

As I’d said many weeks ago, the ‘South Tour’ is pretty much an inevitable high school excursion in our parts and I don’t know how it came about that I missed the grand tour of Tamil Nadu’s temples.

But still, the desire came and the plan formed itself. I am glad to have waited. Not to have wasted the first breathtaking glimpse of all this grandeur on a callow, self-absorbed teen but instead to approach it in adulthood with at least a modicum of appreciation and a certain capacity for awe. And also a certain ripening of Bhakti.

Ours was not an overly devout upbringing. Certainly not the temple-hopping kind. Yes, there was a puja room in the house and a certain openness to the Divine, but I was as confused as the next person about religion and spirituality. I remember puzzling over Ganesha. Was I to take him literally? Or as a reference or pointer to something more subtle? Now, after being initiated on the spiritual path, I have evolved into an even grander canvas of confusion.  

So was this a pilgrimage? Yes. Adventure? Most certainly. A mission? Yes. We were setting off just as Sadhguru had left for the Caribbean for the Save Soil Movement. For the arduous, extremely demanding 100-day journey that he was embarking on, we were excited, concerned and eager to beseech the benediction of the gods. 

Once we decided that we were going to do this, Shweta and I sat down to planning in a hurry – we had to do all the biggies, we had to include the four pancha bhuta sthalas in TN, we had to visit the Devis, we had to go to Rameshwaram, we had to go to Palani. Tamil Nadu being Tamil Nadu, there are a host of samadhis too and Shweta had a parallel list of various places of high energy that we had to include. And then what about all the spectacular architecture… it was a mission! But we managed to simmer it down to a workable circuit.

And this, more or less is how we went about it.

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“When God is your tour guide…” Shweta muttered once.

That’s how it felt.

It seemed like every step was charted out for us. Everything seemed to fall in place. The timing, where to be at what moment, where to go, where not to go. You will feel, as we did, that these are an extraordinary number of lucky coincidences for anyone to have. And yet, that’s how it was.