During September last year, I had an opportunity to visit Melukote, a temple town steeped in history (a great deal of barbaric incidents too), around 150 odd kms away from my place, and my first visit to this revered place that hosts a few famous temples.
I posted this article on my Facebook Page on September 12th last year but had forgotten to post it on my blog.
What an outing I had with my old childhood friend, Kishan, and his siblings!
I got a call from him last weekend when he invited me to join his family for an outing to Melukote, a holy place for the Iyengar community.
The traveller in me quickly said YES, without even blinking my eyes.
Off we went early this morning, all eight of us, huddled in two cars.
After the breakfast of Iddli, Pongal, and a still-cooked Vade at Kadambas on Mysuru Highway, we drove to Melukote, arriving there around 9:30 am.
We had a very good Darshana of the presiding deity Lord Cheluva Narayana Swamy and His consort, Goddess Lakshmi. Since Kishan and his family had special pooja, we were somewhat privileged devotees to have a ringside view and behold the beautiful idol of the deity. One look at the Lord, and you can understand why He is called Cheluva Narayana Swamy!
The temple has so many rich carvings on the pillars that normally, visitors overlook to appreciate either due to lack of time or otherwise.
A few of the pics below show the rich carvings. Pics inside this temple, courtesy - Suma Rao.
Well, I could have posted a few more dozen pictures of this amazingly beautiful temple and its precincts.
A pit stop later, we proceeded to climb the hill (around 300 asymmetrical steps from where we parked our cars) to reach Lord Narasimha Swamy Temple on the top of the hill.
The abhisheka was special in the sense that only a limited number of sevakartas will be allowed to perform this seva on any given day and we were fortunate to have prebooked the seva. This idol of the Lord, too, is a magnificent one and one can feel the presence of the divine, inexplicable energy as the eyes behold the Lord.
Forgot to add - just before the start of Abhisheka, we started to chant Shri Vishnu Sahasranama Stotra as we had about 20-30 minutes before the priests prepared for the ritual. It was an unbelievable experience to chant this sacred stotra in a group and in the sanctum sanctorum in the divine presence of the Lord!!
We were blessed indeed to witness the Abhisheka to the Lord in such close quarters.
I could capture this only in my terapixel camera (eyes) and could store it on my petabyte harddisk (brain) for anytime recall!!
Once the Abhisheka concluded, the sanctum was closed for Alankaara and in this interval, we were offered a sumptuous prasada of banana rasayana and waited for the Lord's Darshana, post Alankaara.
Having filled our eyes with the image of the Lord post Alankaara, we had our second innings of the fill of prasada that consisted of Kadamba (a la Bise Bele Bath), Puliyogare, Ksheerannam and Curd Rice.
Our stomachs full of the tasty prasada, I proceeded to the rooftop of the temple for some pics and panoramic views captured both on my camera and my terapixel camera and stored it for posterity on my petabyte hard disk, for my anytime recall!
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After this, we climbed down to our cars and went to see a few other famous sites in the town. Akka Thangi koLa (water tanks), which is famous, like the other main pushkarani in the town, for shooting movies of all languages and Soapies too!
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Before we started our return journey, a few of us couldn't resist the visit to the famous Subbanna's Canteen for various types of ready-mixes, condiments, etc.
Somewhere in between, we stopped for a coffee break that was very much needed as we were feeling a bit down from the heavy lunch, what with such a filling lunch!
On the whole, it was a day well spent. Many thanks to Kishan, Harish, Meera, Jyothi, Jaisimha, Ranjini and Balaji for the excellent company and for hosting me!!
Looking forward to more such short visits with them in the future!!!
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