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Dear bhAgavathas,

 

I am happy to inform all of you that my wife, Madhuri, and I have just

completed building and purchasing a new home. We are interested in

conducting a traditional grihapravEsham, and now seek help from all of you

in this regard.

 

We have been working with Sri Narasimhan Bhattar of Sri Venkateswara Temple

in Malibu, who fixed a date of December 6. He was planning to officiate,

but had to cancel because of some family matters that require him to

lengthen his stay in India.

 

My wife and I have checked both in LA and in Pittsburgh for priests, to no

avail. Consequently, we are seeking the help and advice from those of you

who may be knowing of a traditional SriVaishnava priest that can conduct

this function. We would still like to have the grhapravEsham be performed

on the December 6, since several members of our family have already

purchased airline tickets to attend.

 

Please reply at your earliest convenience, so that we may work out the

details with the priest and his temple quickly.

 

Thank you.

 

adiyEn,

 

Mohan

msagar

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Dear Sri Mohan Sagar,

 

I put this on the net instead of directing only to you to highlight a point

to the people on the network. It is clear from Mohan Sagar's email that

there is a dearth of qualified priests belonging to the srivaishnava

sampradaya. Pretty soon our community in the USA has to do something about

this so that in each city atleast two priests are sponsored and invited to

stay in US. One day this is going to happen. Hope it is soon enough. We

have to organize well here in US regarding this.

 

Sri Mohan Sagar, Please try to find a suitable priest from srivaishnava

background. If not possible, you may want to try a smartha pundit either

from chicago Balagi Temple in Aurora, Illinois, Kris Krishnamachari of

this email network will know better regarding this temple. I you call Sri

Siva Vishnu Temple temple in Lemont Illinois. There is another person from

madhva faith - pundit Raghavendra from san Diego - his number is

619-566-5644. I am sure from cincinnati ohio there is another priest whom

another member of this net: Tatachar, knows about. You have to make

enquiries to find this person.

 

If nothing works out, I can myself perform a grihapravesham ceremony for

you to the extent of my knowledge, in a srivaishnava sampradaya. This is a

last resort just to state that you are covered. A small 'if' is that I

have to go out of country in December. I am not sure when it will be but I

can do my best to accomodate your request. Please note that I am not a pro

and Mani Varadarajan who had a first hand experience regarding this at my

home for some other function will know better. Bottomline is, I can get it

done if you have patience to tolerate a non-professional.

 

 

At 06:18 AM 11/8/97 +0000, Mohan Sagar wrote:

 

>Dear bhAgavathas,

>

>I am happy to inform all of you that my wife, Madhuri, and I have just

>completed building and purchasing a new home. We are interested in

>conducting a traditional grihapravEsham, and now seek help from all of you

>in this regard.

>

>We have been working with Sri Narasimhan Bhattar of Sri Venkateswara Temple

>in Malibu, who fixed a date of December 6. He was planning to officiate,

>but had to cancel because of some family matters that require him to

>lengthen his stay in India.

>

>My wife and I have checked both in LA and in Pittsburgh for priests, to no

>avail. Consequently, we are seeking the help and advice from those of you

>who may be knowing of a traditional SriVaishnava priest that can conduct

>this function. We would still like to have the grhapravEsham be performed

>on the December 6, since several members of our family have already

>purchased airline tickets to attend.

>

>Please reply at your earliest convenience, so that we may work out the

>details with the priest and his temple quickly.

>

>Thank you.

>

>adiyEn,

>

>Mohan

>msagar

>

>

>

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Sri Krishna Kalale writes:

>I put this on the net instead of directing only to you to highlight a point

>to the people on the network. It is clear from Mohan Sagar's email that

>there is a dearth of qualified priests belonging to the srivaishnava

>sampradaya. Pretty soon our community in the USA has to do something about

>this so that in each city atleast two priests are sponsored and invited to

>stay in US. One day this is going to happen. Hope it is soon enough. We

>have to organize well here in US regarding this.

>If nothing works out, I can myself perform a grihapravesham ceremony for

>you to the extent of my knowledge, in a srivaishnava sampradaya.

 

Sri Kalale, my sincere thanks for your kind offer to come and perform this

function. Had I known sooner that you are familiar with the ritual I would

have happily consented to this. But, as I stated in another posting, with

Perumal's Grace, we have managed to procure the services of one Sri

Jaganathachari of Chicago's Sri Venkateswara Temple.

 

My little dilemma has raised an interesting issue, though, as is indicated

by Sri Kalale above. It takes me back to a discussion we had several months

ago about encouraging our priests to become more involved in the community

of their heritage. While I know that several SriVaishnava communities are

taking active steps to involve priests at their respective temples in

traditional activities, I would concur with Sri Kalale that a more organized

approach needs to be taken to ensure that qualified priests are made

available to the larger SriVaishnava community in the US as a whole. This

would not only be good for we lay followers, but would also serve to

encourage the priests, whose traditions have seemingly become diluted by

years of service in the more generic Hindu Temples, to reacquaint themselves

with the philosophy and culture in which they are trained.

 

While I also would like to see qualified SriVaishnava priests in every town,

I would like to propose that a good first step would be to compile a list of

traditional SriVaishnava Priests who are already here, and who would be

interested in making their service available to the members of our

community. My use of the term "traditional" is rather intentional here, for

I would like to compile a list of those individuals who would support the

sAmpradayam oriented attitudes of the members of this forum, and who would

be willing and able to lead us in activities that conform to our traditions

and beliefs.

 

I would be happy to compile this list, with the help of all of you in this

forum, and provide it as a posting to everyone. I have already started the

list by collecting the names and temples contained in the responses from

this past weekend. I would appreciate the thoughts of the more erudite

members of this forum, though, before I proceed further.

 

adiyEn,

 

Mohan

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Dear Sri Mohan Sagar,

 

Yesterday, I responded to you directly. I believe in Venkateswara Temple, in

Chicago there is a SriVaishnavite priest, Narayana Bhattar who is from

Bangalore. There are THREE Sri. Vaishnavite priests with Sri. Venkateswara

temple, Bridgewater, NJ. (Names: Tatacharya, Sampath Bhattar & Veeraraghavan).

Temple phone no: (908) 725-4477. There are TWO Sri. Vaishnavite priests

with the Hindu Temple in Flushing, New York (Ragahav Bhattar & Rengarajan).

Temple phone no: (718) 460-8484.

 

T. R. Govindarajan.

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