Beltangady: Devotee’s Unique Vow to Serve Sautadka Mahaganapati
News & Pics: Arun Uppinangady
Daijiworld Media Network – Beltangady (SB)
Beltangady, Jul 22: The uniqueness of Sautadka Mahaganapti Kshetra, a temple situated at Kokkada village in the taluk is that devotees are free to perform puja to the 2000-year-old Siddivinayaka idol, the main deity of the temple, which has no roof. Here’s a devotee who has been paying obeisance to Lord Mahaganapati from past two years by performing a very unique service.
Pradeep Bhandari, a software engineer who hails from Kadur in Chickmagalur district has been an ardent devotee of the lord and has been visiting the temple every month on Sankashta Chaturthi since July 2007. As part of a vow, he has been offering his service through which the Lord has been decorated with different items from the past 25 months. He has to continue offering his service for another seven years to complete his vow of decorating the Lord in 108 different items.
Bhandari, who visits the temple at Sautadka on Sankashti every month starts decorating the Lord at around 7 am, with the items brought by him, which concludes at around 11 am. As part of the ritual of Sankashti, Bhandari starves himself on the day.
Bhandari has to offer the service for 83 more months and on that many Sankashti for fulfillment of his vow. On the last Sankashti that will fulfill his vow which falls on June 2017, Bhandari plans to decorate the Lord with all the 107 items using which he would have decorated the Lord till then. He also has a wish to bring together all the Seers on the day under the presidentship of Dharmasthala dharmadhikari Dr D Veerendra Heggade.
Bhandari further wishes to start an offering of food service as vow at Sautadka after fulfillment of the current vow. He plans to collect funds for the service through the sale of compact discs comprising the photo of all the 108 decorations that would be done on the lord after fulfillment of the current vow. So far he has decorated the lord with turmeric, vermillion, 21 types of fruits, 21 types of flowers, 10,000 white chickpea (Kabuli Chana), 1,250 mosambis, 10,000 cherries, 1,000 potatoes, 25,000 lemon, 2,500 beatle leaves, 1,00,000 brinjals among others expending Rs 5,000 every month.
Journey from being atheist to believer:
Bhandari, who first visited Sautadka in June 2006 says that till his late teens he was more or less an atheist. However, a chance to visit Anegudde temple in Udupi district when he was pursuing his first year engineering changed all this. Narrating the incident, he says when I was about to offer a rupee to Lord, I found out that if that rupee was offered I would be left short of a rupee to pay for my bus fare to go back home. Therefore, I did not offer the money and left after praying to the Lord, he says.
On his travel back to native a couple sharing the seat with him struck a conversation. They also offered him some food. He soon dozed off and when he woke up it was time for the couple to get down got down from the bus. After they alighted when he checked his pocket he found a 20-rupee-note which turned him into a believer of God. After the incident he also heard about the Sautadka temple from one of his friends.
Soon he visited the temple in June 2006 and was deeply influenced by the spiritual atmosphere of temple situated amid nature’s bounty and vowed to decorate the Lord in 108 different items by visiting the temple on every Sankashta Chaturthi for ten years. Bhandari says that the vow is not undertaken for fulfillment of any wish, but only as a devotional service.
Bhandari is one among the three sons of couple, businessman Somashekarappa and Yashodamma of Kadur. Somashekarappa is an ardent devotee of God who as part of his service to God has financed the construction of 51 feet gopuram at Shaneeshwara Temple, Mylara among others. Bhandari runs a cyber centre, Inchara Cyber Zone at Kadur.