Tirupati Deities to Go Globe-Trotting

[Guest guest]

BANGALORE (November 22, 2006): After Mumbai, next on the itinerary of

the Tirupati gods is Detroit in the United States. God willing (and if

devotees pay for it) the temple authorities will extend the guided

tour of Lord Balaji and Goddess Padmavati to other destinations across

India and the world.

 

At each port of call, a ritual wedding of the God and the Goddess will

be performed, an event hitherto conducted only at Tirupati. But first,

the Gods will wed in Mumbai on December 2 and 3, followed by another

celestial marriage in Detroit some six months later.

 

While the original idols of Balaji and his paramour will continue to

be ensconced in the hilltop temple's impregnable sanctum, it is their

replicas that will do the travelling.

 

"This is the first time the idols are being sent out of the country,"

spokesman K. Rampulla Reddy of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams

(TTD) told DNA. Trained archakas (priests) of Tirupati's Vedapatha

Shalam will perform the rituals.

 

The Detroit tour took shape earlier this month when TTD's chairman B.

Karunakar Reddy was in the U.S. to visit the Venkataswara Temple at

Novi in Michigan. The Detroit Telugu Association will foot the bill

for the transportation and the rituals, the same way the South Indian

Education Society will bear expenses for the Mumbai tour.

 

While existing replicas of the idols are being taken to Mumbai, the

ones that are going to the US are being sculpted at TTD's Institute of

Traditional Sculpture and Architecture.

 

SOURCE: DNA India, Mumbai. Gods to go globe-trotting. By Bhargavi Kerur

URL: http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1065595