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Showing posts from April 11, 2014


Flower Showering Festival or Poochoriyal at Samayapuram Temple

Poochoriyal means sprinkling or showering of flowers and is an important festival at the Samayapuram Mariamman Temple . The festival takes place on the last Sunday of the Tamil Month Maasi. During Poochoriyal lot of beautiful flowers of various kinds are showered on the main deity of Goddess Mariamman worshipped in the temple. The festival is unique and highly auspicious as no other abhishekam is performed on the main deity in the temple as it is made of sand clay. More than 100,000 devotees visit the temple during the period to have a darshan of the deity taking a shower of flowers. The festival is spread over four Sundays during the month of Maasi and Panguni. The festival begins on the last Sunday in Maasi month. This is the Sunday starting from the first week of March. During the festival, Mother Goddess Mariamman undertakes a fast for 28 days for the wellbeing of her devotees. During these 28 days cooked food will not be offered as naivediyam, to the deity.

Graphic Biography of Swathi Thirunal – Musician and King of Travancore – In Comic Book Format

Graphic Biography of Swathi Thirunal in comic book format is authored by Lakshmi Devnath, a Chennai-based Carnatic music researcher. The book is the sixth title in the series ‘Pictures of Melody.’ The book consists of 24 pages – the first 12 pages are on the lineage and Swati Tirunal’s achievements as the ruler. The next 12 pages are about his music. The New Indian Express reports “It was obviously no easy task compiling such an extraordinary legacy into 24 pages,” said the book’s author Lakshmi Devnath, a Chennai-based Carnatic music researcher. “The project took many months of research and my notes alone covered well over 300 pages.”  These notes - referenced from various sources including works of R P Raja, S Venkatasubramanya Iyer and P Shungoony Menon, old government records and journals of the Music Academy in Chennai - have now been compressed into roughly 140 picture panels that tell the tale of the “rare gem that adorned the throne of the erstwhile kingdom of T