'Occasion'al Bakthi

I use to go to a Kabaleeswar temple atleast once in a week. Today being a Saturday, I went to the temple. I know it would be crowded by peek hours(6.00-8.30 PM). So, I reached the temple around 9.00. Believe me, in spite of spending only 5 min in front of the deity, it took me 1 Hour for me to come out of the temple. The queue was not less than 100 Mts long and most of the time, I was just standing in the queue. Later, I found that today is "Maha Prodosham" that comes once in a year. That too this is falling on a Saturday is more auspicious. This is how it is with any other auspicious day like Diwali or Pongal.

This is not the case just with the Kabaleeswar temple. There are 9 Siva temples in and around Mylapore and all these temples are equally crowded. So are the temples in Triplicane, Adambakkam or even with temples in far south like Thirunallar or Thirukadayur. Go to these same temples on some other ordinary day, you might not even get to see the priests. From my childhood, I have known about "Prodosham". But the concepts of "Sani Prodosham" or "Maha Prodosham" are fairly new to me. I am not sure if these are new terms introduced to commercialise Gods more and more. But one thing for sure is we Hindus are running short of temples or auspicious days on which we can go to temples.