Thursday, April 23, 2009

All you might need

Poojas in a temple need a lot of things to be part of the offering. These days, very few people know what items are required, but yet, they just breeze to the temple with the confidence that there would be enough makeshift shops outside selling all the ingredients one might need for a normal, straight-forward pooja.

Flowers are essential, of course. You have a choice of the arali (Nerium indicum), the jasmine (Jasminum auriculatum), the lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), the rose (genus: Rosa) and, because this one is close to the Kapaleeshwarar temple, the nagapushpam (Couroupita guianensis) also. And then you have the grasses - I believe that's the darbha grass, used as a purifying agent in sacred rituals. Finally you have the coconuts and the charad - the small earthern lamps, either filled with ghee or as just the shells.

The agarbattis seem to be missing here - or maybe I'm missing something about the poojas to be performed at this temple!


4 comments:

J.C. said...

Interesting description. There are so many items beong sold at the stall.

In Malaysia, the stalls outside a Hindu temple usually sell flowers such as lotus, jasmine, mixed type of flowers, chrysanthemum, lamp with ghee and kaffir lime.

Shantaram said...

@ J.C.: Lots of similarities... but I don't think I've seen kaffir limes... lemons, more likely, here!

Leif Hagen said...

Namaskara! Cool fruit stand photo! It reminds me of my 4 weeks stay in Bangalore in Feb/March this year. Fun to look through your blog photos and remember my adventures in south India. Dhanyavadagalu! I'm new to CDP; I started EAGAN daily photo. Regards from Minnesota, USA

Shantaram said...

@ Leif: Thank you for dropping by! And yes, you've got a good thing going with the Eagan DP; will keep visiting it!!