Coimbatore: Devotees flocked to many temples in the city in large numbers on Wednesday to usher in the Tamil New Year and Vishu with prayers and by seeking God’s blessings.
While the turnout of devotees was just 50% of what the temples used to record on festive days in the pre-Covid days, temple authorities said the crowd was several times larger than that on the non-festive days in the past one year.
Most of the temples allowed the devotees in only after checking their temperature and making them sanitize their hands. They also asked the crowd to follow the government guidelines to contain the Covid-19 spread through repeated announcements. There were also temples that made the devotees stand in queue to avoid crowding inside.
In addition to all these, police personnel were deployed in front of temples to ensure strict adherence to the Covid guidelines.
Sree Ayyapan temple at Siddhapudur in the city had seen 10% to 15% increase in the number of devotees on the day, compared to the previous year. A member of the temple committee said, “Unlike the previous years, both the Tamil New Year and Vishu is celebrated on the same day this time. A large number of Tamils and Malayalees visited the temple since morning. Usually, Keralites staying in the city would travel back to their native places to celebrate the festival with their relatives. But this time, many of them stayed back and visited the temple because of the travel restrictions and fear of Covid-19.” The temple also saw more than 100 families feeding solid food to their toddlers for the first time. “It’s an auspicious day for the ceremony. Earlier, we used to see only 30 to 40 such families. While we had more than 100 of them today, we had limited the number of people accompanying the child to five to reduce crowding inside the temple. Instead of offering annadhanam in plates inside the temple, we packed the food and distributed it outside the temple.”
A Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department (HR&CE) official, who is incharge of Arulmigu Koniamman Temple at Town Hall, also confirmed that they had registered a significant increase in the turnout of devotees on the day. “It was a floating crowd and hence the temple was not packed with people at any time. A lot of people from neighbouring districts used to visit the temple on auspicious days. This time, many such outsiders and elderly people didn’t visit the temple because of the pandemic situation.”
He said they had put in lots of efforts to strictly follow the government guidelines inside the temple. “We had to send a couple of devotees out of the temple as they didn’t wear face masks. Usually, we would offer annadhanam (full meals) to more than 100 people inside the temple. This time, we just offered variety rice in disposable plates that too outside the temple.”
An official with the Mundhi Vinayagar Temple at Puliyakulam said there weren’t big celebrations as they wanted to keep the crowd in check.