Cyclone Fani: Puri deities face severe flower crisis

BHUBANESWAR: Until last week, the deities at the Jagannath Temple in Puri were being offered, and festooned with, abundant flowers and basil leaves (tulsi). But in the aftermath of Cyclone Fani, Jagannath and His brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra have to be content with only a palm-full of flowers as the shrine's gardens in Puri have been badly damaged.
The Jagannath Temple has four gardens - two (Koili Baikuntha and Nilachala Upabana) inside the shrine premises, a third at Matitota and the fourth near Narendra pond. These help it meet its daily requirement of flowers like jasmine, tuberose, lily, rose and tulsi leaves during the conduct of the rituals and the change of beshas (attires). The 12th-century temple has 22 types of rituals. The deities have seven beshas every day.
"We are faced with an acute shortage of flowers and tulsi as Fani caused massive damage to the temple's gardens. We have been procuring flowers and tulsi from different sources for the smooth conduct of the daily rituals and the beshas. Devotees, too, are donating flowers to the temple," the temple's spokesperson Laxmidhar Pujapanda told TOI.
Official sources said Fani also caused damage to a garden of the Regional Plant Resource Centre here where over 100 varieties of flowers and herbs, mostly used in daily rituals at the temple, were grown in 2016.
The temple administration said the shrine's gardens would soon be renovated. On Friday, the director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India, Usha Sharma, visited the Jagannath Temple and took stock of the damage to the shrine complex. Sharma said the temple suffered minor damages and would be repaired before the Rath Yatra on July 4.
Servitors have appealed to the pilgrims to donate as many flowers and tulsi leaves as they could to the temple. "Just like the deities relish varieties of cooked and dry bhog daily, they have a weakness for flowers and tulsi," said a priest.
"Since flower and tulsi plants in Puri, Khurda and Cuttack have been destroyed in Fani, people in the unaffected areas of the state can generously donate flowers to the shrine," said Shyamaprasad Mohapatra, a servitor.
On Sunday, some devotees from Ekagharia Sarana Srikhetra in Dhenkanal district donated four sacks of basil leaves, lotus and some other varieties of flowers and fruits to the temple. "We have been collecting flowers and tulsi from the devotees and donating them to the temple for the past one year. We have grown a tulsi garden on the banks of the Brahmani river in our village. We send flowers and tulsi four times a month to the Puri temple but now we will send them twice a week in view of the shortage at the shrine," said Chintu Baba, a devotee.