Dear Vaishnavas, I had the great privilige to have Darshan of Lakshmi Narasimhar and Yoga anjaneyar at Sholingur on 02.01.03, and I wish to bring to your views the following on the conduct by the Archakas and the other happenings. 1) There are more than four archakas in the Lakshmi Narasimhar Sanithi and the behaviour of them was attrocious ( I feel sad to use these words but I cannot help it). 2) At the first instance they do not guide and help the pilgrims in the right way. One of the archakas was found sitting at the entrance and behaving in a irresponsible way for pilgrim queries. He was doing kainkariyam for Thayar Sannithi. Darsanam for the perumal and Thayar was permitted in alternative times only and not together inspite of the rush of the pilgrims and the fact that one of archakas was found in slumber and giving irresponsible answers. 3) To my possible extent I gave Rs.50 as my offering for the archakas and this was not adequate for them and they DEMANDED more. I was forced to give them my piece of mind. The whole affair gave the projection of a money spinning racket and there was a middle man who is a non archaka who is taking inventory of the collection and deciding how the distribution should take place.( All this happening in front of the pilgrims) I hopelessly tried to perform a archanai and the archaka was not even aware of what I was mentioning on the Gothram, Star or anything. Halfway through I stopped and he also stopped and gave me some prasadam and asked additional Rs.10 for the prasadam. 4) In the chinna malai I even heard the archakas exchanging some very bad and abusive remarks on the posture of Sri Renganathar. In the chinna malai ( Anjaneyar Sanithi)There is one senior archaka who is continuing to have some value system but I heard the junior archakas literrally abusing him and calling him by names in front of all the pilgrims. I finally gave my piece of mind to one of the archakas that his collection per minute on an average works out to more than Rs. 30 which will add up to more Rs.5000 per day on a average and inspite of that they are still not satisfied. I also added that Perumal only can save them from the state they are in. While in the ground in the entrance to the temple another form of money spinning was going on. There was some illegal gambling and people were involved in throwing rings on some money bundles. I have seen that this is the modus operandi in all the bigger temples, either this type of gambling or the lottery racket. It appears there is a bigger team at the back ground. The objective here seem to be to drive the people who are involved in temple services ( Auto drivers, flower vendors etc ) into this racket and then later use them for different anti temple activities in the long run. Let us all make a note of this pattern and do our little part to remove these anomalies. Let us do our little part. Cheers, Suresh ============================================== PS:Moderator's Note: Rather thatn just talk about things and how they are, Let us take this oppurtunity to talk about what can be done, and who can get involved? Who are the authorities to whom we can bring this to? ==============================================
Home Page
http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia |
ramanuja-subscribe@yahoogroups.com To subscribe to the list |