My in-laws have the custom of visiting their ancestral deity function every year during March and I too inculcated this habit from them. Come March, we will all book our tickets and would be all set to visit Trichy(that is my in-laws native).
Not only our family but my husband’s cousins also travel for this function. It also helps us to have a family get together or the connect with the entire family members!
I always look forward for this function as this is the time of the year, I usually take couple of days off to enjoy the festivity. Thanks to my boy for growing big, his exams fell exactly during this function and so I had a narrow option of doing a flying visit to the temple on the main festival day!
Most of my relatives and us end up meeting in the railway station during our onward journey, where majority of us board either rock forte or the mangalore express !The fun and frolic starts from there.
These days also happens to be no cooking days, where we majorly eat out by trying out restaurants or order food from the caterer and make out stay hassle free!
The actual festivity starts 10 day before the main function and it is usually termed as kaapu kattu in tamil. This also marks the official start of the function for the year. The function is celebrated for 5 consecutive days!
The function starts with bringing the goddess out from the temple and placing her in chariot, transferring the power from the idol in the temple to the one in the chariot. And then the goddess is taken to the main place called Puthur.Once it is brought to the main place, the goddess visits the nearby streets in a fully flower decorated chariot. And then during the main function, the goddess goes to the select few streets with musical instruments (thaarai and thappatai in tamil)It is always an eye candy to see her in a fully decorated chariot!The main important person during this festival is called “marulali”.It is said that the Marulali has to fulfill all the qualities to reach the status.Select few things related to the goddess are hidden and the person competing for the marulali post should identify all to qualify for this post!
There are numerous shops selling this and that, there are people who call and donate food and butter milk during the festival. Kids have total fun in buying balloons, cotton candies etc .Post this festival ,we end up visiting all the nearby temples, ensure to get a good quantity of vegetables from Gandhi market(fresh farm produce) and then start back home!
This time, we had a fully jam packed schedules and so ended up by just visiting Srirangam!For the first time ended up eating curd rice from one of the prasadam stalls. Ambrosia it is!!!
It is really heartening to see my father-in-law and one of my husbands cousins taking up the complete ownership of the function, coordinating it so well with other committee members of the temple and safeguarding the family tradition !I also happened to hear from my father-in-law that their ancestors were doing this function for long and it is carried over for generations now!
Festivals like this always bring loads of fun and frolic .It also helps us to get connected with our family members, have a good time with them and enjoy the festivity to the fullest ,much like a child!
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