‘PONGALA’ THE SHOW STOPPER

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‘PONGALA’ THE SHOW STOPPER

For a vast majority of non Malayalis, whenever one talks of any religious fixture in Trivandrum, it is but natural that the mind races to the Padmanabha Swamy temple. Very few of us are aware that there is another famous temple in the nearby vicinity called Attukal temple. the Presiding Deity of which is Attukal Bhagavathy Devi. It is a shrine popularly known as the Sabarimalai for the ladies. 

Unlike the Swamy Ayappan of Sabarimalai who is a strict ritualistic disciplinarian and a ‘strictly males only’ centric God, who doesn't let any able bodied females come anywhere near the premises of the temple,  the Devi Mata is more humane, motherly and approachable to all her Bhakthagan male or female alike. However during the celebration period of PONGAL, she also takes a cue from Sabarimalai. It is a strictly a ladies affair of Pooja and celebrations limiting their male counterparts strictly into playing only a supporting role. 

But what is so special about this temple and why are we talking about it in the same breath as the mighty Lord Padmanabha Swamy ? Indeed there are many things about this temple which are unique to themselves, never seen anywhere else in any other part of the world. 

I am not here to discuss the ‘who, where, why, when and how ‘of this great Deity.  Those details can be easily found with a few clicks of the mouse under the guidance of Google and Wikipedia. It is however, the conduct of the Pongala festival per se, which has mesmerised me no end that I am going write about and present you an outsider’s perspective.

 

The Attukal Pongala Mahotsavam festival is celebrated for 10 days in the MAKARAM KUMBHAM month of Malayali calender which generally falls in the month of Feb - Mar every year. The Pongala made of rice jaggery and coconut is offered to the Deity on the penultimate day. This exclusive festival being celebrated in honour of the lady Deity and exclusively by the ladies, the ladies in this part of the world await for these days with great reverence and anticipation. The ladies are expected to come to the temple, offer their prayers, cook the Pongala in the temple premises /surroundings with the fire lit in the temple premises and passed on to all the devotees for cooking.  It is generally cooked in an earthen pot using dried coconut branches for burning. All cooking is done at the appointed auspicious time and Pongala  is offered to the Deity. A simple ritual if done within the confines of the temple compounds. 

 

The real challenge of conducting Pongala comes to the fore when we realise that the lady devotees who assemble on this  appointed day are not in scores or hundreds or thousands but in millions. It was on this Pongala day in 2011 that a team from Guinness Book of World Records came to witness the event and officially recorded that, this ongregation of women in excess of 3.5 million, was the largest on a single day anywhere in the world.  A certificate to that effect has been proudly displayed in the temple premises by the temple trust.

The Trivandrum Municipal Corporation has a daunting task in managing this huge congregation of ladies for a safe and organised conduct of the festival.

With the ever increasing popularity and aastha in this festival, it has been estimated that around 4.5 million women congregated for the festival on 05th March 2015. 

The temple premises can at the most provide space for a couple of thousand devotees to settle for the Pongala cooking ceremony. The remaining are naturally obliged to settle along the roads all leading to the temple. As regards the number of temporary hearths which are set up for the Pongala cooking, it can be mind boggling. By very reasonable estimates, if we expect about four ladies per family to come for these rituals, for a ladies’ strength of about 4.5 million, hearths in excess of one million would easily be lit up. 

The Corporation here undertakes to provide bricks to the devotees to set up their hearths for cooking. At the rate of three bricks per hearth, easily, bricks in excess of three million are procured and placed in small small piles along the roads for the ease of the devotees to pick up and use. 

A large number of volunteers come up to serve the devotees with water, lemons, dried fire wood or coconut three branches some food etc on as required basis. All available ambulance vehicles and fire tenders are placed on call in the near vicinity. Nearly three fourth of the roads in Trivandrum are declared as festival zones where vehicle movement is severely restricted. All schools, colleges and offices are closed in service of the Deity and her beloved devotees. 

Analysing this ritual from the Lady devotees perspective ,  the main challenge for them is to find a suitable place for cooking the Pongala as close as possible to the Attukal temple. If not in the temple premises, then places along the roads as close as possible to the temple are chosen. I was surprised to see that people come as early as 3 to 4 days to secure those prized locations within the temple premises for setting up their hearths on the appointed day.

Ladies coming from different parts of Kerala and nearby States come by all means of transport a day in advance. I also heard Railways do not check for any tickets on these two days. Whether it is by design, default or difficulty,  I do not know. 

All the ladies fresh after a bath, wearing the traditional cream coloured set sarees/set mundu, with chandanam and thilakam  applied onto  their foreheads, and a thorth/small piece of white cloth tied over their heads to soak the excess water from the wet hair, moving around and greeting each other, is a splendid sight. These ladies, along with the pongala ingredients come in the wee hours of the morning and take up a suitable available in place along the road. The hearth is set up, and kept ready for preparation of  Pongala. It is a sea of ladies all settled along the road and in available open spaces , smiling, laughing, chatting, chanting and praying, awaiting for the appointed time of Pooja at the Attukal temple. 

Perhaps it is one day in the year...  when Lord Padmanabha Swamy also gets to carry out a reality check of  His own perceived popularity. On all other days His temple is inundated with devotees with hardly any time for his little privacy. On this pongala day the focus is entirely on Attukal Devi.   There is little or  no way for anyone visit His temple.  The Pongala Bhakthagan settled  along all the paths are all busy with the Devi Pooja with their backs to the Lord Padmanabha Swamy. May be it is His leela in his own inimitable style to take a day off !!! 

Cutting the long story short, at the Attukal Devi temple,  various Pooja are performed in the morning  and at the appointed time around 11AM, the auspicious fire from the temple is passed on to the nearest devotee to light up the hearth for cooking of Pongala. The fire is then passed on sequentially to all the hearths in the vicinity and along all roads to light up all the hearths.... Yes, I mean to more than a million hearths!!!

Now the Pongala preparation  has to be offered to the Deity. You may wonder how.  The Attukal Devi Bhagavathy, all kindness personified that she is...  goes to the devotees herself  instead of they coming to her to the temple.  As a mark of accepting this Pongala, a mini army of Pandits of the temple trust, carrying with them  the holy water or the theertham go in all directions of the city where the devotees are ready with the cooked Pongala. They  sprinkle the theertham into every pot along with chanting of mantras  thus  signifying that the Deity accepted the Pongala from all her devotees and  has blessed them.  The devotees in turn, with reverance in their eyes and bhakti bhav in their minds distribute and consume this Pongala as Prasadam. All these rituals get over by about 4 PM. 

Now the battle in the real life begins for all the ladies and their families to reach their homes and reach safely. 

A time when the entire city of Trivandrum stops all other activities to ensure safe and successful conduct of this one and only unique festival in the entire world, isn't  PONGALA a show stopper !