God’s Own Country’s capital, Thiruvananthapuram, turned into a virtual Yagashala on Tuesday with smoke rising from the open hearths set up across the city and reverberating Mantras when about four million women from Kerala, other states and even from outside the country cooked Pongala (rice-jaggery pudding) on the streets and offered it to the Goddess of the Attukal Devi temple, known as Women’s Sabarimala.
The rush of woman devotees of the Goddess on the occasion was so heavy that women had lined up for cooking the Pongala on the city streets in a 12-kilometer radius from the Attukal temple. Women from all walks of life - housewives, bureaucrats, film and television stars, politicians, spouses of VIPs, etc - cooked Pongala for offering to the deity.
The ritual of offering Pongala started late in the morning after the Tantri (traditional chief priest of the shrine) handed over the holy flame taken from the sanctum sanctorum to the Melshanti (head priest) for kindling the main hearth in the temple compound. Then the associate priest kindled the hearth (Pandara Aduppu) in the temple’s courtyard.
After this ritual, millions of woman devotees kindled the hearths they had set up everywhere in the city. The women cooked the Pongala to be offered to the Goddess in fresh earthen pots decorated with flowers and sandalwood paste. Several celebrities like film and TV stars, senior politicians and leaders’ spouses offered Pongala on the city’s streets.
The ritual concluded after 1.30 PM with the sprinkling of holy water in the Pongala pots by hundreds of specially appointed priests and showering of flowers from helicopters. Pongala offering was the main ritual marking the conclusion of the ten-day annual festival at the Attukal Devi temple.