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Ramanuja List Archive: Message 00035 Apr 2002

 
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srImathE rAmAnujAya namah

thiru-k-koodalUr, ADuthurai-p-perumAL kOvil:

This temple's perumAL is jagad-rakshaka perumAL. But
the temple is in a very very bad shape, and is very
poor. To make a long story short, this perhaps is the
most deserving temple that I have seen for our kind
of a project.

I visited this temple as well on April 8th (have
visited multiple times previously to do the legwork) ,
and here are the "steady-state" arrangements.

1. This temple has a bhattar 
who lives in a neighbouring village. He takes care of
three temples (Along with his brother) for survival.
This temple has practically no income. The priest's
father has become blind due to some illness, and he
has to be taken care of as well. There is another
younger brother doing Agama studies, and a sister.
These common survival issues make it a *necessity* for
him to work in 3 temples to make a decent living 
(he might make around 2000 rupees a month totally,
and the day I went there, was mentioning about
3000 rupees he needed to pay the examination fees
for hsi brother who is doing Agama studies in
thirupathi). Please respect the sanctity of this
family by respecting the above information. I am 
giving this only to provide people with a better 
understanding of the day-to-day issues surrounding 
temples in rural areas.

2. This temple also has a staunch devotee who gathers
local children everyday and does bhajans for about
half-an-hour to an hour. (whenever he is in town
and that is about 15 days a month).

3. I have agreed on behalf of VEDICS to provide a
steady source of income to the priest of this temple 
(2000 rupees per month), and sponsor 4 feasts 
(thaLigai-s) a month - on every saturday. Since the 
local people are coming regularly, this will enable 
more of them to come and participate in the temple. 
That in itself will improve the temple by leaps and 
bounds. The cost for that is about 800 rupees per 
month.

4. The staunch devotee (srI srInivAsan) has agreed to
bring the local people for these gatherings and
for every-day bhajans in larger number. We will
provide him with photocopies of 10 pAsurams that
thirumangaiAzhvAr has sung about this temple,
and that will become part of the bhajans as well.

5. The temple will be open from 7:30 to 11:30 and
from 3:30 to 7:30. There might be some exceptions,
but someone will *always* be at the temple. There
is a watchman to this temple as well, who gets
paid 130 rupees per month!. We need to do something
about this in the long run.

6. A few of us bought a number of utensils for this
temple a few weeks back. Now that the temple will
be open regularly, they have requested for two
things - (i) a ghee-lamp for use instead of
camphor and (ii) a small loudspeaker/tape player
for playing suprabhAtham, sahasranAmam and the
AzhvAr pAsurams every morning and evening. I have
committed that I will look into it and then 
get back to them about the feasibility.

7. We do need volunteers to support the above effort.
Till the time we have volunteers, I will take care
of the expenses from here.


adiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan,
varadhan


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