Saturday, December 11, 2010

Start of sthapathi work!!!!

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 spontaneously agreed to give a concert for this project in Narada Gana Sabha on Saturday 26-Feb-2011. The tickets for this event are going to be available starting from first week of January '2011. Please spread the message around and block your tickets also now by sending an email.

Sarvam Sri Krishnarpanamastu

http://gururayar.wordpress.com

Monday, December 6, 2010

Foundation for the priest residential area completed!!!

@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 and take care of the daily kainkaryas to all the deities.

The video footage ends with a slightly distant shot of how these up coming structures look like from a distance.
END NOTE

When I visited the site today to check out the progress and capture this video, some how started feeling a little elated that a site that was a barren agriculture land till a few months back and only with a dream of seeing a divine temple there, is slowly getting built and is taking shape. A lot of people are contributing to make this happen - either monetarily or by providing physical help or by providing moral support or by simple plain encouragement. I am sure that all of these souls have been specially earmarked by Sri Guru Rayar before hand - just like HE has earmarked us with this great enormous task as the people with primary responsibility to make HIM seat there.... At the same time, it sounds a little ironical when people with tall claims and build up on email/phone, just refuse to carry forward their commitments that they had promised earlier and also with no follow ups given or return of calls. It is all the more surprising that these people were highly educated 'professionals' - but then this is possibly a lesson for us that has been given by HIM to show that materialistic growth has absolutely NO relation to spiritualistic growth - a fact that HE has been continuously highlighting with different incidents and telling his devotees personally when HE was going to different places before entering his brindavanam. All these incidents are available for mere mortal souls like us as part of 'Raghavendra Vijayam' book which was given the seal of approval by HIM personally as a complete authentic work detailing his life.

While this was an 'eye-opener' experience of one kind, I would like to sign off this blog post with a very touching incident of the other extreme that happened around a week or 10 days back... I was driving down to home after seeing a prospective customer and negotiating the Chennai city traffic during the peak hour. A lot of thoughts were going on in my mind in parallel - about the meeting with the prospect that I had just completed, as well as the developments on the project site and arranging for the finances... Just then, my mobile phone started ringing and I didn't want to take the call as I was driving the car and negotiating the traffic... I just ignored the call and left it. As soon as the first call was over, the mobile started ringing from the same number and again the third time... This time, with a little concern that someone seemed to be desperately needing to reach me, I just parked a car in the safe place and attended the call.... At the other end of the line, there was a very old man speaking... Going by the trembling in the voice, I would easily guess that he should be somewhere around 80+ years in age. He had heard about this project from an advertisement in the TV and wanted to contribute in his own way. These were the exact words that he spoke: "I am an old retired person who might not be able to contribute to what you would require for completing this big task that you have undertaken for Guru Rayar... But I am sure that if 10 such retired persons like me give you Rs.100 each, it will take some miniscule load from your end. Hope you will accept this without any rejection and give us some satisfaction at this stage of the life of having also participated in this kind of activity". After hearing his words, I just involuntarily closed my eyes and just thought that there are so many such folks still existing who wants to do their own bit - I was reminded about a small story of the squirrel in Ramayanam which helped Sri Rama's army to build the Sethu bridge by rolling on the mud and depositing the mud from its body in another place.... And very promptly, the very NEXT day, the money order of Rs.100 came from this old gentleman... I just prayed to Guru Rayar to increase our mental strength and resolve in this project to complete it - if not for anything at least to live up to expectations and belief of these kind of people...

Sarvam Sri Krishnarpanamastu