Auspicious start to Attukal Pongala in Thiruvananthapuram

Annual Attukal Pongala festival in Thiruvananthapuram sees women devotees making sweet rice pudding offering to goddess Bhagavathy.

Women devotees have begun making the ‘pongala’ offering to the presiding deity of the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple here on Sunday morning by lighting tens of thousands of makeshift brick hearths lining city streets, public spaces and temple grounds.

They began cooking the ritual offering — a sweet pudding of rice, jaggery, grated coconut, ghee and banana cooked in earthen pots — after the ‘Pandara Aduppu,’ the main hearth at the Attukal Temple was lit shortly after 10.30 a.m.

A few minutes earlier, temple tantri Thekkedath Kuzhikattu Parameswaran Vasudevan Bhattathiripad passed the flame from the temple’s sanctum sanctorum to Goshala Vishnu Vasudevan Namboothiri, the chief priest. The Pongala hearth in the temple’s Thidapally was lit first. The flame was then taken to the ‘Valiyathidappally,’ and a few minutes later, the ‘Pandara Aduppu’ in front of the temple was lit to loud chants of ‘Amme Saranam, Devi Saranam.’

The annual event dubbed the ‘Women’s Sabarimala’, is witnessing a huge turnout this year with devotees arriving from different parts of Kerala and even other States. Simple Krishnan, a school teacher from Gurgaon who teaches kindergarten students at the Delhi Public School-45 says it’s a wonderful experience. Originally from Haryana, she first heard about this ritual from her classmate Sabitha, a Kochi girl, during their school days in Delhi.

“She used to tell me that there was this big pooja,” she said. Later, she got to know more about it from her husband Deepak Krishnan, a Keralite currently working as a senior manager in Ahmedabad. Ms. Krishnan is making the Pongala offering at her husband’s brother’s home near the Attukal temple. At her first experience of this ritual, her father C. P. Karbanda is also accompanying her. “I was looking at the TV yesterday and saw the crowds. But it’s a wonderful experience,” she said.

Overcast skies and a mild drizzle on Sunday morning had given some anxious moments to the devotees, but now the sky has cleared.

The Attukal Pongala falls on the ninth day of the annual ten-day festival at the temple.