Day before yesterday, September 1, 2011, I lead the Ganesha Chaturthi prayers at the Andaman Narayanan temple site. The temple, through the effort of Mr. Anathakrishnan Samee, a vice-president of the foundation in charge of the temple, had acquired a beautiful 4 feet granite Ganesha deity last year. Usually the temple invites temple priests from Malaysia to conduct its celebrations. However Ganesha Chaturthi being an all-Hindu festival, where temples of all Hindu denominations celebrate grandly, left no priest available for the yet to manifest temple in green hills of Kapong, Thailand. I took the opportunity to offer to lead the prayers. It has been sometime since I conducted a puja in a temple, the last time was almost a decade ago while I was in my guru's monastery in Kauai, Hawaii.
The Andaman Narayanan Temple is at the moment a project. It has a ways to go before the temple is completed, though construction is set to begin sometime at the end of this year or early in the next. The temple is in the village district of Kapong in the province of Phang-nga. This entire province is very nature and agriculture oriented. Where the future temple site is located is verdant green with jungle and agriculture crisscrossed by pristine rivers and set amidst rolling hills. It is an ideal place of pilgrimage, which is why I suppose the Hindu merchants who had arrived here more than a millennia ago decided to create a temple complex here.
If you were at the temple site, you will find yourself in a forest garden, with tall trees everywhere and a few very unobtrusive structures that are the temporary shrines and living quarters of the caretakers. I stayed two nights in the humble accommodations at the site to prepare for Ganesha Chaturthi prayers. The whole place was quiet, calm and conducive for deep meditations and introspection. The spiritual vibration in this place is very tangible for those who are sensitive to these forces. As soon as I get to the grounds of the temple I feel the light headed-ness caused by the rush of kundalini up into the higher reaches of the cranial chakras. This all makes for ease in doing the puja as far as getting into mystical consciousness, though not very efficient for staying focused to prepare all the necessary articles required for the homa, abhishegam (ritual ablution) and puja, so the two days of preparation was helpful.
The temple site had flooded and subsided a day before I arrived, which was on the 30th of August. By the time I got to the temple site, everything was drying. The weather on the day of Ganesha Chaturthi was simply perfect. Not too hot, but clear and sunny. It made for an inspiring start to the celebrations. The Ganesha Chaturthi celebrations at the temple site was not much publicized. Just a close circle of committee members and a few village folk attended which kept the focus of the celebration completely centric around Ganesha and none on crowd management. This was perfect and probably the only time when this will ever be possible for Ganesha Chaturthi here.
Lord Ganesha, or Phra Vi-Ka-Nit, in Thai, is a very dear to Thais. However, in their ethnic culture Thais do not have a specific day of celebration for Lord Ganesha. It is likely that the Andaman Narayanan Temple is going to be an important place of pilgrimage for Thais and people around the region such as Malaysians and Singaporeans for Ganesha Chaturthi in the near future.
As part of the prayers, I performed archana for more than 200 people, chanting their name and nakshatra (birth star according to Indian astrology). This list spanned people whom I am acquainted with in my service in Malaysia and people from around the world whom I know through
MyHinduPage.org. If you look carefully at the picture below, you will see Lord Ganesha covered in vibhuti (holy ash) as part of his abishegam. I will be sending this vibhuti, which we collected from the deity, to all those for whom I did archana.
After the puja, all the devotees went to the future Ganesha temple site in a small parade to break blessed coconuts at the place where Lord Ganesha will finally be seated in his own temple. The Andaman Narayanan Temple Foundation is making plans to start construction of this temple by the end of this year Lord Ganesha willing.
For more information on this historic temple project, please click here.
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