Building Guru Raghavendra Mrithika Brindavanam: Experiences

11-Dec-2010: Yesterday, Friday, the 10-Dec-2010 was an auspicious day - Shravana, panchami thithi, Thiruvonam Nakshatra, Sukhla Paksha - was the earmarked date by Sri Guru Rayar for doing an auspicious minimal pooja for Sthapathi to start his work on the site. A small puja was done on the site by Sthapathi himself before the Rahu Kalam started at 10:30AM. The initial work will start off on having the Moola sthanam done after which the artha mandapam will be constructed. Once these are completed, then finally the maha mandapam construction will be taken up. All the plans for each of these have already been posted in earlier blog posts. As mentioned before, this place will be one of the very few mrithika brindavanams for Sri Guru Rayar following the pancharatra agama sastra. As a major support initiative towards the fund raising for the construction of this divine project, the famous Carnatic musicians - Bombay Sisters (Smt. Saroja and Smt. Lalitha) were very kind enough and spontane...

@4-Dec-10 By the grace of Sri Hari, Vayu and Sri Guru Raghavendra, the foundation portion of the temple office, madapalli (kitchen), go shala and the residential places for priests and office bearers have been completed. A small video footage of the completed part taken on the project site is available at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m97AxwBJCxU NOTE ON THE VIDEO: This footage starts off with the foundation part for the temple madapalli, office and the gho- shala and then moves towards the left a little where you see the foundation for the residential areas that is being constructed for the temple priests and office bearers. Taking into account the location of the place where this divine project is coming up, it would be not possible for archakas to come in from some place like Kanchipuram and then do the nithya kainkaryas. So, it has been decided that some basic accommodations are made available to the archakas which will emable them to stay there itself a...

@21-Nov-2010 By the grace of Sri Hari, Vayu and our Guru Rayar, another small but very important milestone has been reached - the construction of the pile foundation for the temple sanctum sanctorum is complete and a small video footage is available at the below mentioned URL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn80sMKzKso NOTE ON THE VIDEO FOOTAGE: This video footage starts with the pile foundation portion of the main sanctum sanctorum, then takes you towards the foundation portion for the artha mandapam and the maha mandapam - all as per the pancharatra agama sastra. After the side view of the foundation is presented, you see the current foundation structure being built (This is currently ongoing) for the residential area of the archakas and the office bearers at the rear side. After this portion, you see the front view in close quarters the pile foundation structure of the temple area (including the separate foundation structure for Garudar sannidhi in the front) Braving the ...

We had reserved for leaving for Mantralayam on the night of Deepavali (Nov 05). The original thought was that it would not be too much crowded for darshan owing to Deepavali and hence we can have a good darshan the weekend. Unfortunately, all the tickets didnt get confirmed and since there was only one berth that got confirmed, I left alone for the trip. This trip was a very memorable experience in the kind of darshan that I had in MALM since the grace was more to pin me very close to vayu putra sannidi. Events and a lot of people in the temple were giving me directions to be closer to Vayu putra sannidhi for a maximum amount of time during this trip. On the Saturday afternoon had been to bichalaya. Since the roads were in a bad condition, we took a parisal to cross the Tungabadra river and then took an auto to visit the brindavanam there. Felt a little sad to see that Appanacharya's house was in a demolition mode currently. Because of the road conditions for the entire stretch...

@3-Nov-10: Happy Deepavali wishes to all visitors to this blog! Let Sri Guru Raghavendra antargata Mukya Prana antargata Sri Lakshmi Nrsimhar bless us and lead us the right path in the coming days ahead! During the last week, in spite of the monsoon rains picking up momentum in Tamil Nadu, major amount of work in laying the pile foundation for the temple sanctum sanctorum and the mandapam were constructed. The remaining small portion of this foundation work is expected to get completed in the early part of the coming week. Also parallely, the column laying work of the priest residences have been completed in the past week. The following small video footage captures the view of the project site as it is existing currently. This amateurish footage starts with the recording of the column work done for the priests residence portion, moves over to the right and shows the column work done for the temple office, madapalli and go shala(which was already shown in the last video update in ...

@20-Oct-2010: The last few weeks progress has been a little slow owing to the frequent rains that we were experiencing as well as owing to the Ayudha Pooja holidays that was there. The issue that we were facing earlier about the trucks carrying the materials getting stuck in the slushy roads seems to have been resolved now by having around 15 loads of a specific type of mud (with stones) laid on the mud road. This has helped us to mitigate the problem of materials not being able to reach the site. This is another of the issues that rose its head which got solved by the grace of Sri Guru Raghavendrar. This became a very critical roadblock - the materials were not able to be delivered in the site which led to more delays in the work to get completed in phases.... At the same time that this was happening on the site, a lot of personal hardships came in one after the other only to for each of them to get resolved automatically in a few days.... We took all these events as a test of our r...

Yesterday, had been on a visit to the site since the construction was started around a week back with the initial steps getting done for laying the foundations of the rear portion of the temple area - temple goshala, office, store room, madapalli etc. as well as the workers sheds... Last week was a little ominous one with too much of negative signs - since the fields were agricultural fields, one of the workers when cleaning was bitten by a scorpion and had to be rushed to the hospital for immediate first aid treatment, another worker had to kill a snake since it came dangerously close to him and he then cremated the killed snake, the engineer who was kind enough to volunteer his services on a honarary basis fell down from a bus unfortunately with bruises on his leg and was advised rest by doctors .... and it went on and on .... Added to all this, the continous unseasonal rains which Tamil Nadu was subjected throughout last week introduced its own problems where rework had to be done...

It was Aug 22 2010 (Sunday). Heavy rains were forecasted in the entire state of Tamil Nadu during that day as well as the next 2 days owing to a formation of a low pressure area in Bay of Bengal. True to the forecast, it was raining very heavily on that day since morning without any stops. Aug 22 was also a very auspicious day. It was the first muhurat day in the Tamil month of Avani after one full dry month of Aadi that is considered as inauspicious. It was also a 'vastu day' - a day in which it is very strongly believed that vastu wakes up by opening his eyes and Vastu is strongly associated with that of any land property. Taking into account all these, it was decided that the initial bhoomi puja for this auspicious project also should be done on that day. Owing to the heavy rains, the start from Chennai that was scheduled for around 12:00PM got delayed by more than an hour. Also the travel time increased and the convoy of vehicles reached the site only at around 3:30PM. ...

18-Jul-2010: As mentioned previously, the problem of the existing borewell not working with the electric motor installed for drawing the water was taking too much time to be solved. We were always thinking that the reasons for such a long delay in getting this resolved will be known only best to HIM. Today, HE possibly wanted to highlight those reasons to us!!! Firstly, the initial bore well that was dug out in the site last year around Sep time frame was for around 250ft. on the fear that even though water was available at around 30-35 ft. what will happen if the water table receeded much below? However, after doing this digging to around 250 feet and laying the pipe, we just thought that the filter for the bore can be just dropped to just 50 feet and not to be dropped for the entire 250 ft. This proved to be the problem (?) now since the loose mud which was prevailing in that area had gone under to a height of 250 ft from around 50 ft. below the ground level. This made the pipe...

Finally, after a long wait, by HIS grace, the site of the project has been electrified with supply coming into the site today. This has been a long drawn process but would NOT be without any reason. It was a good sight to watch the electric bulb glow in the site after dark. It was also a gratifying site to see that the plants planted a few months back have started showing signs of slowly growing up with some of them also starting to yield the flowers. while this might be a very small step in the final completion of the project, it was very satisfying to see that by HIS grace, this place is showing signs of the fertility that is required for this to complete successfully. Some of the pictures of these has been captured below: http://picasaweb.google.com/vasan.vs/SiteUpdate01Jul10# As one milestone gets completed, it is the start of the next challenge that has to be overcome by HIS grace. The bore well pump that was installed and getting used ran into problems when it was needed ...

@20-May-10 Last Thursday (13-May-10) was the amavasya day and the start of the new month - end of adhi masa as per the kannadiga calendar and start of the vaikasi masa. It was also an auspicious day being the Thursday. We were told that the construction plans that were submitted to the local panchayat body a few days back were approved and can be collected! Since was a major milestone, we were thrilled with reaching this critical phase of this project. Also, the start of the construction activity required soil testing to be done on the site to determine what kind of foundation has to be laid. Coincidentally, after multiple weeks of follow up for that activity, it looked like it was destined to happen on the same day. By late evening on that date, the soil testing was also completed and the test reports are awaited by the end of the week. Since this was an activity being undertaken for a social cause, the owner of the firm that did the soil testing - a good samaritan - offered to do...

@03-May-2010 Over the last 5-6 weeks, there has been multiple versions of the master plan for the site that was prepared and modified on a continuous basis. It had taken a lot of versions from where it all started to the current version. The drawing layout of the main temple including the gho-shala is available at the following location: http://gururayar.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/temple-and-goshala.jpg The drawing layout of the central hall (to be used for meditation/annadana hall/discourses etc.) and accommodation for the archakas is available at the following location: http://gururayar.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/central-hall-and-accomodation.jpg The drawing layout of the accommodation for the yatrikas/seva devotees is as seen in the following location: http://gururayar.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/yatris-accomodation.jpg Any comments or thoughts from the visitors to this blog site on these proposed layouts are more than welcome to add value as we all realize that th...

@15-Mar-10 The following scanned picture gives a bird’s eye view of the complete plan – Not to scale as far as the plot layout is concerned. http://gururayar.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/myscan.jpg The center portion is going to be the main sannidanam with Lakshi Nrsimhar, Hanuman and Sri Raghavendra Brindavanam followed by the ardha mandapam and maha mandapam. On your left hand side where you see the two small portions at the top and bottom portion is where the different sannidhis for Pandurangar and Rukmini for one location and Sri Ramar, Lakshmanar and Sita for the second location is being planned. Sarvam Sri Krishnarpanamastu

After the last post that I had made a couple of weeks back, things have been proceeding steadily without getting struck. Maybe it was Guru Rayar's thought that the lessons on patience has been taught enough to me for the time being!!! After one of the architects and another engineer who was instrumental in shaping another of the mrithika brindavanams for Rayar in Chennai had given their acceptance to carry out the works, it was the turn of the sthapathi to come out with the initial sketches on the vimana, artha mandapa and maha mandapam. For this purpose, I had requested the sthapathi to come down to Sri rangam with all these details on the last Monday March 11,2010. After discussion with the acharyar and taking into account the various agama sastra rules, it was decided that it would not be appropriate to have a single sanctum sanctorum having all the deities of Sri Lakshmi Nrsimhar, Anjaneya, Rayar brindavanam, Pandurangar and Ramar all in a single enclosure. So it was decided ...

Sincere pranaams to all! Over the last few weeks, as part of the various activities in this gigantic project, I have been observing that even small activities have been getting pushed and pulled along for no reason without getting completed till very late. Some of the examples that has continously happened over the last few weeks that has been made to write this blog item are: a) Even a small erection of a shamiana and pandal just on the eve of the performance of initial suddhi homa on the project site could not get completed till around 11:00PM the previous night when the proposed start of the homas was around 6:00AM the next morning - This got delayed to such an extent that we had to switch on the head-lights of the car to have some light for the erection of the pandal since it was totally pitch dark otherwise in that area at that time of the night. At least, HE had given me the wisdom on that evening to decide to visit the site the previous evening without which this would not...

Friday, Feb 05, 2010 was an important date and a critical milestone on the development of this project. Achar had suggested that some initial homas and poojas are better to be done on this site to suddhify ('purify') the place before the actual construction begins. In this regard, it was suggested that we do the ganapathi homa, sudarshan homa, srisuktham and purusha suktham homa, manyu suktha homa along with hari vayu stuthi punascharana. The main significance of manyu suktha homa is to purify the place with the offerings to Lord Sri Lakshmi Nrsimha. It is said that Bheema (who was a Vayu avatar) in Mahabharat war after killing Dushasana, took his blood in his both hands, and offered to Sri Lakshmi Nrsimha by reciting this 'Manyu Sukhtha Homa' - which helped to purify the complete place. Hari vayu sthuthi is the rendering of a great pandit and one of the favorite sishyas of Madhavacharyar called Trivikrama panditar - after he had a divine vision of Sri Madhvacharyar...