May 2010, The Rangarajar Temple at Pomona
Place & Year: Pomona, USA / 22-May-2010
Author: Vishwa
Prologue | Vinay, the friend of mine who lives a couple of blocks away has always offered me to join for drives to temples in and around NJ/NY. He is not a guy who goes to temples frequently. But now since his mom has come down from India he takes her and his wife Meera on weekend. As I'm a bit inclined towards the omnipresent, he will want me to join. I missed going to the Vinayagar temple in Flushing and to the temple in Woodbridge wholly due to the reason that I slept off on Saturday mornings. This time I made up my mind to make it and the earlier one was not a very busy week.
We planned to leave by 8:30 in the morning and I was completely dressed up by then when I read the voice mail of Vinay saying that they were getting delayed and would start by 9:00. Vinay is not someone who delays things without a reason and so I was ok with it. I used this time and grabbed my laptop to chat with people back home. There were lot of relatives who came in and out during this time and I got the chance of speaking with hem after a long time.
An information board
It was 9 and we were all set to start. I took my SLR and clicked a few snaps of Vinay’s family. The car speakers tuned in to the foot tapping notes which is the only few you find in Vinay’s car. Though I'm not very much interested in these, I was left with no other choice. First we hit the gas station to check the air pressure in the tires. It was an estimated drive of about 1.5 hours. Soon we hit the freeways. After sometime I believe we entered into a country side and it was greenery all around. There were hills in the backdrop. The weather was also enjoyably warm. It certainly was a pleasure travelling through those roads. There were a couple of tolls on the way which were electronic and could only accept one dollar coins. Unfortunately we only had bills. With no other choice, we skipped them without paying and we were discussing about a fine notice coming to Vinay’s home very soon with a picture of him driving and skipping the toll.
The Temple
In about 2 hrs we reached Pomona, a green and beautiful village. No wonder they chose this place for constructing the temple. It took us more than the expected timing since we had to go around a few roads that were blocked for construction and our GPS was stupid enough to get us to the same road over and over.
On the Way
The temple was of good enough size. This certainly would be a large temple as compared to the ones in the United States. But coming from India and visiting Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple and born in Kumbakonam with the architectural splendors of construction going into temples in every other street, this was something normal from my perspective.
Front view of the temple
As we entered the temple there wa room to leave the foot wears and a small wash area too. The temple was constructed with the main Sannidhi of Rangarajar in the middle surrounded by different other Sannidhi’s. The first was of lord Krishna and the idol was big. It was decorated so beautifully with flower garlands and silk cloths with yellow lighting that anyone would lose interest in worldly pleasures to reach his feet. The priest was showing something to a group of people and on closer look it was a statue of Krishna as a baby on leaf made of solid gold. The temple offered a special pooja kind of stuff on Sundays when the idol was offered to be placed on the lap of people wearing Dhothis and Sarees (Native Indian dresses). Then it was lord Venkatachalapthi followed by Rama. None of them were any less in grandness than the others.
Vinay and me
I usually do not get the divine feel on seeing an idol in marble which is more prevalent in north India. Getting used to being to south Indian temples all my life, I have a liking for stone idols of god. This temple had stone idols everywhere and that certainly added to the satisfaction. As I came around the Pragaram and reached the main Sannidhi, it was Rangarajar in full view. The idol was very huge with a silver mould over it. We performed archana (a kind of ritual offering of fruits and flowers to god) and sat on the floor for a while as we had the Prasadham.
Another view of the temple
In some time we came out and clicked snaps with each of us standing in front of the temple. Vinay was interested in the food served by the temple and everyone other than me went back inside to have it. I was trying a click a fee snaps around. There were two cute kids playing hide and seek around the temple. They were all dressed in native Indian clothing of “Pattu Pavadai” and had the perfect Asian look. But when I heard them converse, boom! perfect American dialect. Though not an uncommon site, I was just wondering what they would do whether get back to Indi or even continue to be in America. I clicked some cool pictures of the kids and also making sure no one notices it.
View of the temple from back
In sometime Vinay came back and we started our drive back home. Vinay's mom had made Pongal and offered it to me. It was great. Though I'm not a great fan of Pongal, the time since I had it, made me enjoy it so much. With my tummy full, the discussion slowly drifted towards music and Meera seemed to share and enjoy music in many ways as I did and we kept speaking on songs by Rahman, Illayaraja and a few Hindi notes. With this going on, I never realized that we were almost home.
A view of the mountains behind the temple
It just took an hour and half. This was the second temple visit since I came to US, the first being Aurora in Chicago and It certainly was very satisfactory and enjoyable.
