The new Rs. 100 note, I saw for the first time in May this year at Punduloya when my brother-in-law Shanmugam, the Poosari –about whom I have written, along with the miraculous things that had been happening at his kovil when Sarasu my wife walked the fire and did the Paravi Kaavedi -- showed it to me and took a photograph of my wife -- his sister -- and myself.
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| The circled area of a 100 rupee note depicts the kovil |
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The currency note shows on the right a kovil with a waterfall behind it. There was no mistaking it. It was the Dunsinane Estate’s well-known kovil, about which I had written some 25 years ago.
“The green, green hills are calling. Those beautiful carpets of green,
Where the water’s steeply falling as it rushes along past sheen,
And Dunsinane’s reputed kovil where cobras will come to the shrine
To worship the gods with the people who say are godlings divine.”
In my article headlined “The Kovil and the Poosari,” I carried a photograph of Shanmugam at the shrine with two cobras at either end of the altar, less than a foot away from the hands of the Poosari, and this photograph showed the miracle clearly. Of course, at that time the kovil was not as it is now.
Shanmugam had been given a bit of land by the waterfall to have his little shrine in a hut beside the waterfall and the Dunsinane Estate Superintendent, Mr. Nagulaeswara, had himself come to the kovil to worship on special occasions.
There had been a great deal of opposition to Shanmugam operating there when there was already an official kovil for the lower Division of Dunsinane Estate. But after the cobras began to join in the poojas, and Sarasu, my wife took to fire-walking performing the “Paravi Kaavedi (suspended from six hooks in her body) and in addition going into a trance and curing several people of various ailments, there were many who visited the mud-hut kovil to worship. But few were prepared to give Shanmugam a helping hand to improve the kovil.
Shanmugam with his own hands (with his wife Janaki’s help) built the kovil, brick by brick and stone by stone to what it is now.
And today, the Amman kovil at Dunsinane, Punduloya is indeed something to be proud about. Shanmugam told me, with tears, how grateful he was for the publicity the kovil had received, and to the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa for giving recognition to this miraculous kovil by putting its picture on a currency note.
(The writer is a retired
journalist) |
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