Attukal Pongala celebrations mark the city

CHENNAI: Eight years ago, C Venugopal from Chennai suffered a road accident that left him in a precarious condition. Venugopal, who works at a yoga centre in the city and has since then completely recovered, believes it was his mother’s prayers at the famous Attukal

Pongala

festival dedicated to Bhagavathy Devi — the presiding goddess of the Attukal temple in Trivandrum – that has given him a new lease of life. In Chennai for close to eight years, the family has not missed a single year of Attukal Pongala at the ICL Home Town in Porur since. This is also among the oldest venues of the celebration in the city, organized by K S Dev Anand Kumar and his wife Shanthi Abirami for 12 years now.

The festival of Attukal Pongala, which made to the Guinness Book of Records for having the world’s largest gathering of women in Trivandrum, has grown its roots in Chennai too. Women fast for nine days leading up to the festival, and on the ninth day, throng the streets to cook a rice delicacy called Pongala — made of red rice, jaggery, coconut and ghee — over a brick hearth and offer it to goddess Bhagavathy.

M Nanda Govind, former president of Malayalee Club and Confederation of Tamil Nadu Malayalee Associations, says the festival has grown phenomenally over the last few years in the city, with as many as 10 lakh Malayalees joining the celebrations.

“The makeshift stoves here are lit at the same time as in Trivandrum and the ritual has high significance among devotees, as it symbolizes piety and fulfilment of wishes. Especially over the last two years, we have seen a large number of Tamilians and north Indians also joining, as the festival represents universal ideas of prosperity and wellbeing among devotees,” he says.

Sath Sangama, a Hindu Malayalee association that organizes one of the most popular Attukal Pongala celebrations in the city at AM Jain College in Meenambakkam saw close to 1,000 women participating this year. “We are recognized by the main Attukal Bhagavathy Devi temple at Trivandrum and get the holy water from there,” says Sathish Nair, president of the association.