A Colorful day at Anekal

Anekal is my Mother’s native and I have visited this place quite a few times. This place is very near to Bengaluru and can be reached via Hosur road or Bannerghatta road. Every year a festival is celebrated here in chaitra masa, sapthami tithi (you should know a bit of hindu calendar jargon to understand this). I had been to this festival on 12th of April. Before getting to my experience in this year’s festival let me explain what this festival is all about. This festival is generally termed as jatre in Kannada. All Kannadigas might know what that means. During the festival the idol of the god is placed in a teru (another kannada term!). Teru is nothing but a very tall chariot about 30ft high, decorated with colorful cloth, flowers, banana leaves, ornaments and so on and so forth…, it has 4 wheels made of stone and long iron chains to pull it! The people who come to jatre feel that they get blessings by pulling teru in which the idol of the god is placed. The people use the chains to pull the teru around the temple premises on that day.

I have been to the jatre held at Anekal a couple of times. It was a long time about 8-10yrs since I had been to the jatre held there. The jatre has been sacred to my mother’s family as they used to stay in Anekal when they grew up and used to visit the temple of Timmaraya Swamy (the name given to Lord Vishnu here) to get the blessings of the god. I thought of going to the festival along with my mother. It was a weekend holiday and an opportunity to witness this grand festival which I could not have missed.

It was a bright sunny Saturday morning, a typical bengaluru summer day with around 28 degree Celsius. I packed my camera, water bottles and got ready. It was around 9:45 AM when we reached KSRTC bus stand in Majestic. We came to know from the authorities that the next bus to Anekal was at 10:15 AM. We had to wait for half an hour to catch the bus. There were less number of commuters and the bus looked empty and the conductor took a nice nap till Anekal as no passengers boarded the bus on the way. We reached Anekal at around 12:00 PM (45 minutes late), because of the state of traffic on Hosur road as many of you know!

It was a colorful day at Anekal. Thousands of people from in and around Anekal had gathered to celebrate the festival. The street to the temple was jam packed and the street was invisible. We could see the temple tower from a far distance. The temple site looked colorful. As we walked through the jam packed crowd we could see on either side of the road, shop keepers selling eatables, toys, balloons and many more things. There were giant wheels and all sorts of viable amusement sports. All the people were enjoying the colorful environment and immersed in happiness even though it was scorching hot. I had to drink water often to beat the heat. As I neared the temple I could see the teru standing tall and very well decorated. A new temple of lord Rama was also built and its tower was shining as it was painted with gold shade. We entered the temple and had to join the end of queue to get inside the temple. During all my visits to Anekal I had never seen a queue here. This time the people had turned out in large numbers and we had to wait for almost an hour to see the god.

After having a chance to see the god we came out of the temple and went directly to the site where the teru was standing. The tradition is to throw bananas atop the teru when it is pulled. This is an amazing sight. We bought some bananas and were all waiting for teru to be pulled. The teru was surrounded by thousands of people chanting lord vishnus name. A few volunteers brought the idol of lord Vishnu, shouting and dancing and did the parikrama around the teru thrice, as per tradition. Then the idol was placed inside the teru and hundreds of people who were holding the iron chains of the teru started pulling it. The stone wheels started rolling making a rumbling noise. The people around started throwing the bananas atop the teru. The purohit who was inside the teru to perform the puja had a bad time. He was fired with lots and lots of bananas. The bananas which were ill aimed targeted the people around and it was a real pain after being hit by these bananas as they were traveling like bullets. The teru completed its parikrama around the temple.

It was after a long time I had witnessed a wonderful and amazing event like this. I probably cannot put the entire event in words here as it might take a few pages. I suggest you to visit such an event and enjoy the environment that the event sets in the minds of the people. You can see the happiness, enjoyment and the respect to the tradition that has been followed from decades. It creates a feeling of oneness. Don’t you think it’s amazing?