Building Guru Raghavendra Mrithika Brindavanam: Experiences

@01-Jan-2011: By the grace of Sri Hari, Vayu and our Guru Rayar, the work of the stapathi has started. Here are the first set of videos on this. The following youtube video shows the side view of the level to which the temple is going to be raised from the current ground level - it is expected that the basement of the temple will be around 6.5 feet above the current ground level - to take into account the future raise of road levels. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLaTy2eLnvI The following youtube video shows the aerial view of the maha mandapam, followed by the artha mandapam and the main sannidanam (in which the mud has been kept inside for doing the leveling work). This then zooms in on the current development work of drainage sump that is currently in progress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkOOZieuMn8 Devotees are requested to contribute their mite in what ever way they can towards this noble cause. Please spread the word around and have contributions in kind/cash sent ...

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...