Pilgrimage

Had been to the interiors of central tamilnadu to visit the family diety temples .(both the husband’s side and parents side) . Though the travel was tiring by itself, visiting the temples and of course praying the supreme power helped me be at peace with myself and with life in general. And the fact that this time, the husband didn’t make a fuss of anything which he usually does when it comes to temple visits. Probably all the prayers and temple visits that we have done so far is beginning to take an effect.

Ever since the first/second  miscarriage, both the parents and the in-laws are taking turns to visit every possible astrologer with our horoscopes to figure out if something could be done to appease the gods/goddesses/forefathers which would eventually lead to a grandchild through us for them. All the astrologers that they have visited so far have always been positive and more or less , all of them have suggested a set of temples for us to visit. In addition to that, a few of them have suggested other holy places apart from the common set. So, that leaves us with one big list of holy shirnes to visit. Since the husband is one who is simply uninclined towards religious affairs, come what may, I’m one who gets the nudge from both the parents and the in-laws. Now, I’m stuck between the elders pushing us to perform poojas and visit temples and the husband who gets irritable on forcing him to do stuff that he doesn’t like to. And needless to mention, this has been one of the main reasons for a tiff between husband and myself and on looking back, have a feeling that these tiffs have consumed most of our life so far.   

Coming back to the pilgrimage last week, I was not very sure if we could get the opportunity to go to Sri Sithadi Kathayee Amman temple, family diety of our parents , situated off Kumbakonam on the

Nagapatinam Road

. Reason being time and mil willing to travel there. Somehow, the goddess pulled us there and I was happy that we could make it. I was visiting the temple after a very long time and my emotions were running high. Spent some quality time talking to the presiding deities and left the place contended. We visited the Thiruvenkadu Budhan temple, took a holy dip in the three tanks, offered prayers, had a good lunch before proceeding towards Kathayee Amman temple. Halted at Thiruvaroor , bought all the stuff required for Abishegam at Ettukudi Subramanya Swamy temple the next day. Proceeded to the Murugan temple at around 8AM on Sunday morning, only to reach there at around 9AM and find a huge crowd of devotees in the temple. Somehow, got a time to perform abishegam , had a simple meal at the priests’ house and returned to the hotel to pack the bags and head for the train back to Bangalore.

The two day visit strengthened my hope and faith and brought in a peace. But, being a normal human being, the monkey mind (literal translation for Kurangu budhi) has started showing its ugly head and in a matter of 3 days I find myself struggling to come to terms with the happenings of everyday life ..