A newly made temple in Mangere was inaugurated by hundreds of devotees on Sunday 3rd May where the idols brought from India was placed during a 2 hour long Puja ceremony.
Thiru Subramaniam Temple of Auckland which was originally situated at 41 Stanhope Road, Mt Wellington has been moved to 69 Tidal Road where the enshrinement of the new idols took place last week. The Puja started in the morning at 10 am with devotees queueing in their traditional attire and tikas on their forehead along with.
National MP from Manukau East Mr Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, NZ First MP Mahesh Bindra, Labour MP Su’a William Sio, Sunny Kaushal & Priyanca Radhakrishnan from Labour Party were also present at the venue to grace the event. The Puja started with chants from the priest is Sanskrit and then with the breaking the coconut and doing the aarti.
Lord Murugan is one of the South Indian Gods; it was the ceremony to place the idols since the previous place was smaller for a large crowd. This ceremony called Maha Kumbabishegam (Prana Prathista) or evoking life into the idols from their stone state.
The idols have come especially carved by sculptures from India, the idols are of Lord Murugan, Lord Venkateshwara, Lord Shiva, Vinayaka and all these idols have their respective ‘vahanas’ (vehicles) like Venkateshwara had Garuda, Shiva had Nandi, Vinayaka had Mushaka and so on.
The Puja was conducted by the chief priest of the temple Shri Chandru, the head priest of the Sri Ganesh Temple in Papakura, Sri Swaminathan and few of his volunteered assistants.
The idols were bathed in coconut water, holy water from the Ganges with herbs and with milk too. The Puja ended by noon and lunch was served to almost 500 devotees, and again at 6 pm special puja and Deeparaathanai was done.