The Priest and Bhagavan Guruvayoorappan ! ( True Event ) .

[Guest guest]

Dear all,

This is another story happened in Guruvayur. This happened several, several years ago when the Temple was much less crowded than today .

Shri Maheswaran Nambudiri joined as the chief Priest (Melshaanthi) of Guruvayur temple. He was very knowledgeable, well trained in all poojas and an efficient poojari. Things went very well and his decorations of Bhagavan were appreciated by all devotees.

He had four daughters and one son as the last child. Two of his daughters were married before he became the chief Priest. Now he had the responsibility of the marriage of the other two daughters. He came from a middle class family and he was very worried about the expenses of two more marriages with the limited income he had. Off and on this thought bothered him.

One day he started reasoning with himself : `Guruvayurappan is so wealthy and every day He gets so much money and gold in the form of bangles, chains, ear rings etc. The wealth of gold, silver and money is constantly flowing towards Lord's feet . What if I can save a few of the gold chains for myself to be used for my girls' marriage? After all I am doing very sincere pooja here everyday from early morning till night.'

This thought became clearer and clearer in his mind and soon these thoughts were transformed into action. After the last pooja of the day, he started dropping a few bangles and chains in the waterpot- with- spout (theerthakindi) and carried it to his official home . This continued for a few days. When his son came to the temple, he sent those with him to his house to be kept safely. In those days, nobody monitored the number of offerings done to Guruvayurappan and nothing was documented. Everything was managed based on trust and devotion. So nobody except Maheswaran Namboodiri and Guruvayurappan knew about what was going on. Unfortunately Maheswaran Nambudiri thought he was the only one who knew about it.

After a few days, this chief Priest's wife had a dream that her son would be bitten by a poisonous snake. She was a little worried, but consoled herself saying that it was only a dream. After one or two days, a Brahmin came to her house and told that her son had *sarpakopam* ( curse of snake) and her son will be a victim of the anger of a snake. He said that to prevent this from happening, she had to fill a waterpot-with-spout with gold jewellery and keep it covered for 24 hours. Then the Priest's wife brought all the jewellery that her husband had sent through her son and filled the pot. In another pot the Brahmin filled some water and sat between the two pots for one whole day. He had asked the Priest's wife to check one pot next morning and told her that she would know the reason behind the anger of the snakes.

Next day, before dawn this Brahmin took the pot filled with Bhagavn's jewellery and left the house. The Priest's wife came and looked inside the remaining pot and saw a small snake lying inside the pot. She was terribly frightened and by that time her husband returned home after his designated tenure of six months as the chief Priest . She explained all the incidents and then the Priest seemed the least surprised. With tears in his eyes he said :

" Nobody can fool Guruvayurappan . I could fool everybody. The Brahmin who came was Bhagavan Guruvayurappan Himself and you are lucky to see Him. I stole all those jewellery from the temple and just imagine how kind is Guruvayurappan ! He did not want anybody to know that I am a thief, but He wanted me to know that He knew about it and it was wrong on my part to steal His gold . His devotion to Guruvayurappan increased significantly and he went and told this story himself to the then Manager Konthi Menon and requested to record the incident . He wanted all the devotees to know that Guruvayurappan knows everything we think, He sees everything we do and above all, He is kindness personified.

"Na mae bhaktha pranashyathi," even if he fails at times.

Sreekrishnaarpanamashtu !!!

Regards and prayers

Savitri