Sri Meenakshi Pattabhishekam at Sri Meenakshi Temple

By Haripriya Sundar

PEARLAND: What a grand sight it was to see many devotees gathered in the newly renovated Sri Meenakshi Temple on Saturday evening, April 16. It was windy and clouds were looming overhead, but that didn’t stop the devotees from attending the Meenakshi Pattabhishekam.

Inside the Main Temple, there were three sets of vighragas, with Sri Meenakshi in the middle. The priests started doing the pujas and the devotees chanted the slokas and mantras alongside them. The festival is a reenactment of Goddess Meenakshi’ s coronation as queen.

The royal couple, King Pandian and his wife Kanchanamalai, did not have a child for many years. After many prayers, during one pooja, a baby girl came out of the fire. She went and sat on the King’s lap. A divine voice from the sky claimed that this child is an avatar of goddess Shakthi. When the child gets to the right age, Lord Shiva will come and marry her. Until then, Sri Meenakshi was trained in all kinds of warfare and crowned as Queen Meenakshi of the Pandya Kingdom. This coronation ceremony is known as the Pattabhishekam.

Once the Pattabhishekam was done the symbolic scepter was handed over to the Chairman S. Narayanan to carry around the Main Temple with devotees. Sri Meenakshi has a beautiful flower palanquin (the Poo Pallakku). The Pallakku was decorated with red and white carnations, and this year jasmine flowers were added to the decorations. The Pallakku was then carried out, parade style, in a procession around the temple.

It had started to drizzle but devotees followed the procession around the temple chanting veda gosham and Lalithasahasranamam. A group of devotees carried and played the Chenda Melam, a type of Kerala drum, adding to the liveliness of the festival. Finally, after the ceremony was complete, devotees went into the Youth Center to enjoy a nice dinner provided by Temple.

All in all, the Pattabhishekam was full of blessings and grandeur. The weather did not dampen the spirits of the devotees and everything was run smoothly. Chairman thanked the staff and the volunteers. Several volunteers spent many hours to get the Poo Pallakku decorated.  It was a great precursor to the grand final Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Thiru Kalayanam that is to take place on Sunday April 24.