T’puram: Lakhs of women offer ‘Pongala’ at Attukal

Wednesday, March 07, 2012: In an atmosphere charged with religious fervour, lakhs of women, cutting across caste and class barriers, offered ‘Pongala’ to the deity at Attukal Bhagawathy Temple here on Wednesday.
The heavy influx of devotees turned the city into a teeming mass of humanity. The women who arrived from various parts of Kerala squatted on roads, by-lanes, footpaths and shop fronts in a radius of several kilometres around the temple to cook the mixture of rice, jaggery and coconut in earthen pots that is offered to the goddess seeking divine blessings.
The ritual, which marks the climax of the nine-day annual festival at the temple, began at 10.15 a.m. with the high priest lighting a hearth with the flame taken from the sanctum sanctorum.
The flame was later transferred to another hearth on the temple premises, providing a cue for tens of thousands of devotees across the city to light their hearths.
A huge pall of smoke rose over the city. In a celebration of womanhood, film actors rubbed shoulders with working women and domestic helps to offer Pongala.
For the last few years the festival has been attracted an average 2.5 million women, which promoted the Guinness to record it as the biggest gathering of women on a single day for a religious ritual.
Attukal temple is also called “women’s Sabarimala” as only women perform the ritual while it is predominantly men who under take the pilgrimage to the hill shrine Sabarimala of Lord Ayyappa.