Terkukarungulam - Tirunelveli- Daily Pooja Scheme

Terkukarungulam is located  75 km from Tirunelveli town.

This place was referred by Mr Ganesan who is the priest in Kasi Viswanatha swamy temple in  Ariyanayagipuram,  which is my native place. He is very sincere and devoted person and is also well versed in vedas.

Decorated Lingam

Goddess Gomathi Amman

His brother Sundaram Iyer and his son Sankara Subramanian are the  ones who are taking care of Lord Kailasanadhar and Goddess Gomathi Amman temple in Terkukarungulam for a nominal sum of  Rs 1000 per month including supply of abhishekam materials. Inspite of the low sum being paid as salary, their devotion to god is unstinted. Acknowledging this, it  has been  decided to  adopt this temple for daily pooja at a monthly remuneration of Rs 500 from June 2015.

This temple has Lord Ganapathy, Lord Murugan and a separate sannidhi for Navagraham. There is local patronage on Pradosham days.

Presently work is on to construct a Gopuram over the Sivan sannidhi and is likely to be completed within 2 months.

Our aim is only to ensure uninterrupted daily pooja to the Lord by helping the priest to sustain interest in his work and continue to serve the temple.

Pallakkal Venkatachalapathy temple - Tirunelveli - Daily Pooja Scheme

This narration is about a beautiful stone temple housing Lord Venkatachalapathy and Lord Shiva where there is no daily pooja. We have special interest in this temple because this is the ONLY Vishnu temple which was lying uncared for among the 33 temples we screened for restoration of daily  pooja.

 It is a temple neglected by the locals and not cared for by the Government. This temple is in Pallakkal near Rangasamudram in Tirunelveli district.

The Main entrance has a huge ornamental red colour gate with a small opening at the 

bottom for people to go when the main gate is closed.

This temple has Idols of Lord Venkatachalapathy and Lord Shiva (which could not be seen by us as the Sannidhis  were  closed) but you can see  pics of  Hanumar & Garudan.

For the last 5 months we are on a hunt for a suitable priest to do the daily pooja and only now we have identified one Mr. Muthukrishnan who has agreed to undertake daily pooja in this temple . He is presently taking care of an Amman temple in a nearby village.

Mr Diyagarajan, 78 years old,  the present caretaker, has the key to the temple and is ready to support anybody who is willing to underatke restoration of pooja in this temple. Mr Anand, an youngster and a keen devotee has agreed to personally help do the Uzhavarapani and remove the wild growth and follow up daily pooja in this temple. Our thanks are due to both of them  and Mr L Viswanathan, who is presently in Rengasamudram co-ordinating the activities personally and meeting the Executive Officer at Ambasamudram to seek his support and help for restoration of daily pooja in this temple.

Seed for this venture

It was in 2014 that Mr L Viswanathan and I  discussed about temples  not being  cared for  in many rural locations in and around Tirunelveli which we visit occasionally. One such temple is Narasimhar temple in Pallakkal near Rangasamudaram.

This temple is surrounded by green paddy fields but the temple area was used as an open toilet with thorn bushes providing a cover.

By the time we could discuss and decide on the course of action, we heard that some devotees from chennai have shown interest to renovate the temple and arrange daily pooja. Incidentally, we were told that Director cum Actor Visu's Kuladeivam is this Narasimhar.

Pallakkal - Lord  Narasimhar

The temple was renovated and painting done to give a new look as can be seen from the picture below.

Priest Aadhi attending daily pooja at Pallakkal Narasimhar kovil

Mr Adhi of Rangasamudaram was appointed to do daily pooja and during my visit to this temple early this year, I found that our wish to restart daily pooja in such temples  has been fulfilled even before we started  our effort to do so.

So we have started with a Success story and we took this as a direction by the Almighty to replicate this elsewhere and hence this venture "Temples for you". We solicit co-operation of all to make this a bigger success.

Vayalathur - Uthramerur - Daily Pooja scheme

This Temple for  Lord Mahalingaswamy is on the banks of river Cheyyar and is a stone structure in a damaged state as can be seen from the picture below:

Palani Siva and Senthil outside damaged Vayalathur temple

 This temple was lying closed for a long time and thanks to the effort of a few students , the temple was re-opened and  regular pooja started.

Sudhakar before Nandi and front view of the temple

Ardhanareeswarar alangaram to Lord Mahalingaswamy 

Nandi Alangaram on Pradosham day

 Mr. Magesh along with Mr Sudhakar do the regular pooja and out of their own  passion celebrate every  Pradosham in a grand manner out of resources raised by them locally and the picture above is a testimony to their creativity, passion and love for the Lord.

Mahesh who does the regular Pooja

Cheyyar river just 5 ft away from Nandi

once upon a time the temple car (தேர் ) used to go round the temple on festive days, but now there is hardly 5 ft space to go around the temple, especially  on the river side where there is a big dip due to removal of river sand by various agencies over a period of time. The above picture shows the river side from the temple entrance.

Recently, the local people had a meeting and broadly discussed plans to rebuild the stone structure which would involve a huge financial outlay. only after a series of meetings  will things  take shape. This village is said  to have a lot of retired teachers  who have settled elsewhere and they need to come together to revive the past glory of this temple.

Kudos to the youngsters who are doing a great job now. 

From April 2015 we have adopted this temple under daily pooja scheme at a monthly remuneration of Rs 500.