When we presented ourselves at the entrance of the kanyakumari temple , at about 8 or 8 30 in the morning,there seemed to be a sizeable crowd of people jostling for darshan. As we stood there just trying to get a grasp of the place,and looking about us, someone appeared, or metamorphosed by our sideas as if he knew what we wanted...and was waiting just for us. ."You could go in the queue and it would easily take 1 hour",he explained,"or you could take special darshan tickets and you would be taken right in"he wagged his finger,...." you can take ur pick". Ofcource, we picked special darshan....with hungry kids and scanty time on our hands,we had to...We paid the due amount and got our tickets,but outside the office...there was simply nobody at the office. ...Well..well....
Then followed what i can only describe as going fast forward in a videomovie. We were hurried along stuffy stone corridors and labytinths,all anti clockwise to the normal queues , once sqeezed into a narrow tunnel like passage too i remember,ducked at one or two places and suddenly the man said "ok have your darshan".We strained our eyes ,and just few yards to the front of us, standing in a dark chamber, illuminated by a score of peacefully burning oil lamps was a beautiful face.
Infact till today i remember only the serene ,lovely face and nothing else. I mean not the whole statue. I did not notice it,nor had time enough to,the few moments one is allowed to have being not sufficient for that.Just the serene face with big lustrous eyes which seemed to smile.
It is interesting to notice how the our deities"s features seem to change with and in accordance to the locations.Most deities of south india ,are made out of black stone with large eyes and prominently south indian features whereas,up north,they are mostly made of marble, with smaller eyes and different get ups.
All this took place just in five minutes and we were shoved out unceremoniously afterwards along the same serpentine way we came in before, and got ejected into a sort of waiting hall like mantapam, where we lit some lamps(this was a peculiar custom, i observed on our trip ,having never seen it anywhere in a. p.or elsewhere)
and looked about us and saw a bit of the temple.
It did not seem to be a large one after meenakshi or rameswaram,but by itself it WAS a large temple....A bit low ceilinged perhaps.... somehow seemed more malayalee than tamil....though i can not say i am an authority on these things...Infact the whole village of kanyakumari struck me like that.....might be because of it"s proximity to kerala, i suppose.
The holy mother of jillellamudi used to sugget visiting kanyakumari, whenever someone she knew happened to go that way.When her daughter HYMA attained sidhi, and a temple was being erected for her, mother wanted the image to be fashioned along the lines of kanyakumari .There was something,pure and unsullied about the virgin . Sometimes we can observe the shades of it(ofcource,..only shades).. among our sisters and daughters, among the maidens of strongly protective families,whom we tend to shelter from the harsh realities of this world.They usually grow up to be very kind hearted, always quick to take mercy ,without differentiating on the merits of the recipient because they do not seem to think anybody is beyond redemption.Alas they do not seem to make those kind of girls any longer.
It was used to be said ,HYMA of jillellamudi, who would weep if she saw a sparrow egg broken by a fall,would often go to mother with "amma, aa annayya edustunnadu", " amma aa akkayya badha paduthundi", .Her inherent plea apparently being asking mother to intervene and do something for the needed. It seems one day mother was said to have remarked in exasperation "what is this ra?.Hyma gathers every rascal to her heart and what did she get in return? i would like to break her head and bury her". Well ...... it did happen.later...
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What i mean to say is there is an aura, a fire, something pure and unsullied about the virgin who sat in meditation having renounced her own pleasures, ,,yet from her abstinence drew the power to grant bliss to the multitudes who thronged her presence through her .sheer grace..... Be it the kanyakumari,of cape,.. or HYMA of jillellamudi, or the Kanyaka parameswari, of penugonda.. it is said that whoever goes to them with supplications gets them fulfilled,.....She is supposed to have the power to grant wishes both spiritual and mundane,and the place of her penance is called THAPOBHOOMI . Make no mistake. when u take away the bustling tourists and mushrooming hotels,you will know at once the huge rock surrounded by mahodadhi can never be anything but thapobhoomi .That was why vivekananda meditated there and that was why many other saints did their penance there.,
She was standing there...always....all these days...... it was only our good fortune which draws us to her...yes... it needs good fortune for that indeed.
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