Bheemeshwara Vratha

Hi friends, Saturday was Bheemeshwara Vratha. It is sacred festival for girls and married woman in Hindu religion. It is also called Pathi sanjeevini vratha. It is observed on the New moon day(Amavasya) of the ashada month. It is observed in south India.
It is usually performed for the well-being of the brothers and husbands.
Unmarried girls do it for the prosperity of the brothers and pray for a good husband who is energetic like Bheem. They place a bhandara which will have coins on the threshold of the pooja room or the main house entrance. The brothers have to break it. This is a gift by the sister to the brother. A very good feast with all kinds of dishes is organised at home and the brother is invited to the house if the girl in married.
The married girls take blessings of their husband on that day. And perform pooja for long life of their husband. They usually do it for 9 years after marriage.

My pottery work.

Hi all, I have made a decoration to a small pot. Can anyone guess what is used to decorate it.................
Its rice.....yes its rice granules that I've stuck on it. Then painted it with acrylic paints using grey color. Then I've given a coat of varnish. This is a must otherwise all the rice granules would have disappeared by the next day. The ants will eat them up or dig holes into it.
You can also use other grains and do it. Ragi also will be good as it has a different color and texture.
Do try it out!

My trip to Dharmasthala and Kukke Subramanya

     Hi friends, recently I had been to Dharmasthala and Kukke Subramanya temples with my husband and daughter.

      It was a kind of good experience. We took a KSRTC bus from Majestic to Dharmasthala. It was a Volvo bus with AC and the price was reasonable. We left at around 11pm. Sleeping with kids in the bus is a bit of a problem.

      We reached there at 6 in the morning. After reaching there we realized that we had to book a room before itself as it is difficult to get a room in the weekends.

      Then after waiting for an hour we got a room. We immediately finished our work and went to have our breakfast. There are quite a  number of hotels there and it was full and we had to stand and eat. Adding to this my daughter didn’t want to have breakfast. We knew it would get late inside the temple and so we pestered her to eat something. But she didn’t…and we just took a pack of biscuit and left for darshan. There are 2 entries for darshan…one is the free darshan and other costs Rs200 per person. As we were already tired with our daughter we took the Rs 200 darshan.

      It was quite humid outside and we were sweating a lot. It was a bit crowded as it was a weekend. We had our darshan of Lord Manjunathaswamy. It was good. Then we took prasadam and came out. We had to wait for the lunch in the temple. It would start by 11.45 am. We took some photos by then.

      It was crowded for lunch also. But the dining area is really big. We were served rice and sambhar. It was very tasty. The system of serving food is really good here. Before when we were kids we were given leaves for serving food, now we are given plates. They have a special machine to wash the utensils which is from Germany. I took some rice and rasam in a lunch box for my daughter. We were also served buttermilk and rice. On the whole it was a tasty meal. We visited the lalitha vana near the temple which had some statues and some birds and an aquarium. Then we left for our room.

      I fed my daughter and we rested for sometime. It started to rain heavily. Luckily we had reached our room.

     Then we went to the Car museum which had a nice collection of the vintage cars. Cars of Bapuji was the main attraction. There were also some stone chariots which were only to see. Then we thought of going to Manjusha museum, but it would open only at 5pm. We had to leave for Kukke Subramanya also. So we did some shopping for our daughter and went back to the room.

      We packed everything and left by auto to the bus-stand. There were lots of KSRTC buses for Kukke. We boarded one. It’s a one and a half hour journey and we got to see lots of greenery. The journey is really cool and you will fast fall asleep. There is a river flowing and we could see some people enjoying in the river.

After reaching Kukke we found a good hotel room as we promised to vacate in the night.

There are quite a good hotels nearby. After refreshing ourselves we left for darshan.

      We wanted to have some light refreshment as we were feeling hungry, so got into a self service darshini. My daughter made late again there.

      Then we left for the temple at 6.45pm. We first went to the Adi Subramanya temple. But we saw that it gets closed by 7pm. We were not lucky enough to reach there by 7. There were many who had missed the darshan. Then we came back to the main temple.

      There was already a big queue. Slowly it moved and we had the darshan. There was also an elephant inside the temple. My daughter just loved it.

      We took the prasadam and we were told there is dinner at 8.45pm. There was already a big queue for that. We also stood and had our dinner. Rice with sambhar, rasam and buttermilk. It was good. Outside the temple there were lots of shops and we did some shopping for my daughter.

      We had booked our bus to Bangalore at 10.45pm. So we had some time to rest. We packed everything and went to the bus-stand. The bus was already there. We reached Bangalore by 5 in the morning. The driver drove very fast as compared to the other one.

       Overall it was good trip. The place is very humid so we sweat a lot. That is the only drawback.

                                                  My daughter having fun with the ducks.

                                                                     In the Dining Hall.

                                                                 Outside the temple.

                                                                  In the Lalitha Vana.

Varamahalakshmi Festival

pooja at my place

Hi friends, I'm starting this blog with the first posting of Varamalakshmi Festival celebrations.
This is a festival celebrated in the month of Shravan. It is a pooja of Mahalakshmi done to please her, so that we are blessed with health, wealth and success. On the day of the pooja the women of the family have a head bath, place the kalash on a platform, decorate it with a silk saree and lots of flowers. A lotus flower is a sacred one to be used.
We place the two banana stems on either side of the goddess. We decorate with gejjevasthram, its a garland made of cotton. We tie mango leaves to the threshold of the house. We place 5 types of fruits, the panchamrutham and the nyvedya in front of the god. The family then sits together and performs the pooja.
My mother used to perform this pooja on a grand scale. After I got married and had a daughter I also started to perform this pooja. As my daughter was born on the day of this festival and also it was our country's Independence day i.e. on Aug 15th.

rangoli using rice, gram and dal.

pooja at my mother's place