Event Update: Consecration

I’m in the midway between an atheist, agnostic and a religious person. My particiaption in events based out of religious tradition, is almost always doubtful. Yet, I was part of this community gathering, and I’m going to cover the event.

When a temple gets built, it deserves sequence of rituals that adds spiritual and religious power to the deity living in the temple. As it is a belief based system, logical questioing doesn’t end well. The event took place on August 17-19, 2024.

With my limited knowledge, I’m not sure whether consecration is actually part of the Hindu tradition or mere limited to my state. I strongly believe Hinduism is most decentralised practise. And, any one of us can’t be representing the entire religion. I would call this open source religion, but that’s for some other day.

The Tamil flavour of Hinduism consists of some practise, some deities limited to the state.

• Mariamman - the goddess of rain (mari),
• Murugan - Erstwhile Skanda or kandhan is Tamil god, went on to preach his father - Shivan.
• Karuppu - aka Karuparaayan or Karuppusaami is the kaaval dheivam rough translation leads to Gaurdian deity.
• Angala Paramesvari - aka Angalamman is the goddess, worshipped as a gaurdian deity.

The difference with the Hindusim Tamil-flavour of Hinduism also has some of the practises which might be considered uncommon among other states. The food offered to the deities and the worshippers are customised too. Some of the food offered are,

• Ponga Soru - Raw rice cooked in earthen pots on conventional firewood-burnt ovens.
• Pongal - Raw rice cooked with jaggery, raisin, cashews and ghee. The taste deserves an essay.
• The Gaurdian deities are seen as the ancestors who protected the tribe or community. Thus they’re offered same stuff as someone dwells in a viiage like - Country liquor, country cigars (suruttu), and lamb (or mutton) & country chicken (native breed).

These are all unique practises, limited to a tribe, community or even within families.

In my state, every family has their Kula Dheivam - kulam: ancestry. According to the legend, the Kula Dheivam was worshipped by the ancestors for generations. For the people belonging to the bloodline, their Kula Dheivam takes precedence over other gods.

The consecration took place for my Kula Dheivam - Angalamman. Our grandfather migrated out of their villages due to the drought in 3^rd decade of 20^th century. During the drought and migration many elders died before passign down the where-abouts of their native lands. The resulting bloodline, my father’s generation took grand effort to track back the origin story and figured out the place in the middle-of-nowhere.

This place has problem with network coverage, public transit is limited. The major occupation being farming, the newer genrations moves out of the hamlet for livelihood.

To bring up the temple many of my relatives spent time, money and sweat. Finally, the temple was up and running on August 19^th. I frowned upon some of the tradtional practises. But I learnt some good lessons, which might be applied in other area of my life.

• Group work > Individual Contribution. Unless you lies in the top of chain, group work for you.
• People are more forthcoming when you asked for help.
• Sheperding a crowd, even though it belongs to the extended family, is quite a cumbersome activity.
• People are different, can’t generalise.
• Groupism is very common even among the (mostly) homegenous community.
• Some like to take responsibilities; some likes to follow blindly.
• Religion and Caste can be called divisive force. Everyone accepts. And everyone clings to it.