Menoculayshunal; Twenty Four Hours

Next in this festivals section of the memoir comes Mahaashivratri. This is by far the most prominent and important event as far as it goes for Sandeepany and CCMT. The mandir (temple) is dedicated to Jagadeeshwara, the meditating Shiva. This festival takes place in Feb/Mar of each year (again, defined by the lunar calendar). It begins at midnight of the appointed date and ends at midnight the following morning. A full twenty-four hours of chanting, worship, celebration - and crowds. Oh my word, the crowds! 

I had been warned that there are literally hundreds of thousands of people who visit during that time. Nothing quite prepared me that first year for the sheer volume. Folk started queuing a couple of days ahead, bringing their camp stoves and little stools and even sleeping bags. No one was allowed in for the two days prior to the day, as the mandir and the entire ashram had to be prepared. Decorations alone required all hands to the fore. Then there was the preparation of the prasad (blessed food morsels) - which was where I was assigned. We produced no less than 200,000 palm-size portions, packaged and wrapped, of jaggery payasam and muruku crunchies; families were limited to no more than two items, or we would have run out before getting halfway through the day!

As the queue filed past the foot of the steps up to the mandir, they could purchase a ticket to have one of several kinds of puja performed for their good fortune and blessing. Prices, 500 rupees right up R10k (about a 100 quid or 135 bucksUS), for the auspices of the Lord. 

If this opportunity was not taken, then it was possible to purchase some prasad at the bottom of the hill on the outward route for R40. Whilst inside the mandir, there is also the opportunity to give dakshina (donation) into the hundi (collection chamber). By all of which you can guess that another huge part of operations was to count all that income...

This was exhausting. As an ex-banker, I naturally had skills for this so added this to my seva. Gracious, though, the filth that came off that lucre. I am not talking euphemistically. Not only is the money in India handled so often and with unwashed hands, but there is also a tradition to 'anoint' the coins with perfumed oils or ghee and the notes are used to wrap peepal leaves and sometimes betel, also. Frequent hand-washing was needed not just for hygiene, but because the fingers became so clarted, they almost became useless!

This is such an auspicious occasion, it is the one on which most brahmacharis are given deeksha and initiated into sannyasa (renunciation); converting from yellow (and sometimes straight from white) to orange clothes of the sadhu/sadhvi. 

The evening before Mahaashivratri, all the preparatory ceremony takes place, then at the opening midnight hour, in the mandir, the 'transformation' is performed and the first set of clothes provided as a gift from the Guru. It is very special and another of those real 'family' moments to experience. Much of the crowd that attends come also to witness this - and to traipse into the kutiya (cottage) that was the home of Gurudev to pay homage to the Guru who made this place possible. The atmosphere is electric; despite the lack of sleep, there is an energy that arises from it all. The young ones take shifts at the constant chanting - there are meal shifts and comfort breaks, but it is 24 hours of noisy bliss!