It is very common for Hindu families to take frequent trips to visit the temple of their family deity and pray there at the start of a New year or before weddings or starting any new venture. In the past, the entire family would go and special pujas would be performed. These days, it is a custom that is hardly followed, but my mom is very particular that we do it atleast once a year.Our Family Deity is Lord Oppiliappan, near kumbakonam and he is considered as lord Venkateshwara’s brother and so those devotees who are unable to visit Tirupati to fulfill their promises can do so here.
While on such trips, we also visit a few nearby temples, Divya Desams (Divine locations) and have found beautiful places nearby, especially shrines of my favourite God – Lord Narasimha (Half lion and half Man).You must be wondering what all this has got to do with jewelry. You see that it is very common for people to donate jewelry to their favourite Gods and their Shrines. It could be gold, silver, diamonds or simply glass. We usually buy from jewelry stores and present it and I wanted to do the same last year, but somehow never found anything suitable.
Maybe God wanted to wear what I make 🙂 So I bought some enameled charms, golden beads, jumkhas, pearls and set about making 4 pieces of jewelry.
It came out quite pretty I should say and I fell in love with these Kerala style enamelled pieces.
Such pieces are available at Giri trading company, Mylapore, Chennai but they are just strung together and they have to be either restrung or looped like I have done if you want to wear them.
At First I didnt want to show them off, for it felt weird, then I thought, maybe somebody else would get an idea from this and would want to do something similar. I am out this week visiting these temples but I dont even know if the temple will accept my offering, and whether they would fit the deities. But I hope and pray, that they will.
Cheers
Leave a Reply