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| in white; Amma is at the far right. |
(from "The Goddess and the Guru"):
Barely six months after the Sagara Giri procession, Bala appeared to Guruji again and revealed the reason why the temple model had been returned to him: because it was precisely that—a model. Now, she said, it was time to commence construction of a real-life temple based on its design.
Guruji protested that, aside from having completed the Durga temple procession, none of his material circumstances had really changed: he still lacked the land, labor, and funds to carry out any such building project. “If you wish it to happen,” he told her, “I’m afraid you will have to make it happen yourself.”
“Come on now, is this why you left your job? So you could sit around talking like that?” she replied. “This is my sankalpa, not yours. You are just the doer. You should consider it a blessing that I chose you for this work.”
“Of course I do!” Guruji said. “You know very well that I have always honored you and followed your wishes. But you also know that I have a family to take care of.”
“Your children are my responsibility,” Bala said once again. “Your future is my responsibility. Those who place their trust in me are always in safe hands.”
“Then how do you want me to proceed?” he asked.
Bala instructed him to arrange a Maha Devi Yagna, an elaborate, 16-day Vedic fire ritual dedicated to the Goddess. She specifically cited the 610th name of the Lalita Sahasranama: “Pratipan mukhya rakanta thithi mandala pujita”—expressing her preference to be worshiped during the cycle of 15 tithis or lunar days beginning with Pratipada, roughly from the full moon to the new moon.
“Very well,” said Guruji. “It will be done.”
He realized, however, that before he could inspire others to be enthusiastic about the temple, he needed to convey more precisely how it would look in real life. A fragment from Guruji’s writings of this period lays out his ambitious early conception, similar to yet strikingly different from the structure that finally emerged a decade later:
The temple will be 108 feet square and 72 feet high, like a rising pyramid. There will be 108 Sri Merus installed in the temple, one each under the foot of every Avarana Devatha. At the ground level the temple will have four entrances, representing the four Vedas and the four main modes of learning about God. These also represent the four petals of the Muladhara Chakra. In this level will be four enclosures—the ten siddhis, eight divine furies and ten mudra shaktis will be installed here. In the next enclosure, the 16 lunar kalas and in the third enclosure the eight powers of erotic love, Goddess Rati Devi, will be installed.
The first floor of the temple represents the 14 worlds and the second floor represents 16 deities including the five senses and five motor organs. At the third-floor level, we find ten more deities; namely, the five subtle senses and five elemental states of the world. At the fourth floor level, the eight forms of Saraswati will be installed. At the fifth floor level, the Shaktis Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati are to be installed, along with Lalita Rajarajeswari at the sixth level.
Thus the entire construction of the temple is a massive task of constructing six floors, which will require enormous funds. In this structure, the installation of 108 deities and 108 Meru Prastharas is by itself a magnificent task requiring very high standards of sculpture, architecture and spiritual strength. A very rough estimate of the structural cost works out to around ₹50 lakhs.
Yet as Guruji began working out plans for this unprecedented Devi temple, many of his closest supporters worried that even his proposed Devi Yagna was a case of too much, too soon. “When he announced his intention to perform the yagna, Guruji’s friends and relatives expressed deep concern,” said Prasad Rao. “Frankly, we doubted the feasibility of a ritual of this nature and magnitude. We were well aware that Guruji had very meager funds to draw upon and virtually no organizational backup.”
Confronting his brother, Prasad Rao asked, “Are we really in a position to bear all the expenses associated with a Sri Devi Yagna? Why do we have to do it right now? You’ve already made a magnificent attempt with the Sagara Giri ceremony. That’s enough for now. Let’s wait a bit and hold this Devi Yagna some other time.”
Cynical though such sentiments appear in retrospect, they seemed more than reasonable at the time. As complex as the Sagara Giri event had been to organize and execute, a full yagna would require vastly more in terms of time, financial resources, planning, ritual knowledge, and sheer manpower.
And even Guruji himself had no idea of how to begin.
~
So he made inquiries and soon learned of a priest named Sri Vemakoti Krishnayaji, who headed a small temple to the sun god Surya in the nearby village of Parvathipuram, and was said to be a specialist in complex Vedic yagnas. Guruji decided to pay him a visit.
Upon hearing Guruji’s story, Krishnayaji readily agreed to perform the ceremony and immediately began listing off the various requirements: the offerings would have to be performed by a team of qualified ritwiks—Krishnayaji could supply those; then there would have to be group chants—not only of the Lalita Sahasranama but also of the Vishnu Sahasranama. The actual pujas to the Goddess would involve kumkum offerings—by married women only, of course; no widows…
“Wait a minute,” Guruji interrupted. “No widows? Why not?”
“It simply isn’t done,” Krishnayaji replied. “Those are the rules.”
“Rules!” Guruji scoffed. “Who comes up with rules like that? And why do these rules always seem to involve the haves taking something else away from the have-nots? The have-nots are in far greater need of prayer, are they not?”
“Those are fine sentiments, Dr. Sastry,” Krishnayaji replied. “But it is not the way things are done. If you insist on having widows participate in the kumkum archana, then I am afraid I cannot help you.”
Guruji thanked him for his time and left. He felt overwhelmed by the endless procedural strictures piled atop the more mundane challenges of locating a place in which to hold the event and then somehow sourcing the money to pay for it all. He wanted to obey the Goddess’s request, but saw no way forward. Surrendering to her will, he decided to simply wait and see what happened.
A few days later, as if on cue, Krishnayaji appeared at his doorstep. Guruji, surprised, invited him in.
“Well, you win,” the priest said with a smile. “You have a powerful will, my friend. The Goddess appeared in my dreams and chided me for my inflexible stance on widows.” He laughed. “She actually called me a stick in the mud! So here I am. I’ll manage the priests and oversee the ritual components; you take care of the rest, all right?”
Guruji assented and the work began.
~
The first step was selecting a site. After numerous inquiries, he finally turned to Simhachalam, Visakhapatnam’s renowned temple to Lord Narasimha and always one of Guruji’s favorite places of worship. Though the temple dates back a thousand years, its administrators had only recently completed construction of a new mandapam—essentially a large function hall for special events—less than a mile from the Nishtala family home. When Guruji approached temple trustees about his Devi Yagna, they decided it would be the perfect event to inaugurate the new facility (which was auspiciously named—“by coincidence or providence,” Rama noted—the Prahlada Kalyana Mandapam or Prahlada Prayer Hall).
The starting date for the yagna would be Wednesday, April 27, 1983.
A venue secured, Guruji next set about finding a suitable image of the Goddess to install as the event’s centerpiece. Having collected price estimates from several area sculptors and merchants, however, Guruji realized that he lacked anything close to the money or time required for such a commission. As usual, he turned to the Goddess for advice.
“I recall it was a Friday and we were all gathered at Guruji’s place reciting Sri Lalita Sahasranama in the prayer room,” Prasad Rao said. “Guruji was deep in meditation when all of a sudden his eyes snapped open and he asked, ‘Where is the Parameswari Cinema Hall?’ One of his devotees immediately volunteered to bring him there.”
It turned out that the cinema was, at the time, showing a hit Telugu devotional film called Raja Rajeswari Mahatmyam, which had been playing to packed houses across Andhra Pradesh for several weeks. In order to enhance the “divine mood” during the film’s run, the theatre’s proprietor had installed a plaster statue of the goddess in the lobby, surrounding her with ersatz offerings of fruit, burning lamps, camphor, and incense.
Guruji, accompanied by Amma and the devotee, arrived in an auto-rickshaw and went inside to find the goddess statue standing before them. It was fairly large and quite graceful; with a few small touch-ups, Guruji reckoned, it would be perfect. He told the proprietor about the upcoming Devi Yagna and asked if he would be willing to donate the statue for the event. Honored by the request, the cinema owner readily agreed.
When the film’s run ended shortly thereafter, Guruji and Amma returned with a group of disciples to retrieve the goddess and transport her to the mandapam. Attracted by the joyful cheers as the party carefully loaded the goddess into her own auto-rickshaw, a passing group of professional musicians offered to provide a musical escort.
“I didn’t call any musicians, did you?” Guruji asked Amma.
“Why would we need to ask?” she replied. “The Divine Mother wanted them, so here they are! Let’s go!”
And with a blare of shehnais, the impromptu procession made its way to the prayer hall. As part of the ongoing publicity efforts for the yagna, Guruji hired another vehicle to ply the streets of Vizag for several days preceding the event, blaring an announcement pre-recorded in the sweet voice of his then eight-year-old niece Srividya—Prasad Rao and Sundari Amma’s daughter—as a fitting stand-in for Bala Tripurasundari, at whose insistence the entire event had been arranged.
~
The grand Devi Yagna opened under a shimmering full moon on April 27, with 108 ritwiks led by Vemakoti Krishnayaji performing rituals for each of the 18 Maha Shakti Peetams. The festivities would continue nonstop for the next 16 days until the new moon arrived on May 12—and it was a big hit with the populace. “The whole city of Visakhapatnam was agog with devotion,” Mrs. Neti Sitadevi wrote in a Telugu biography of Guruji. Before the event ended, “more than a lakh people visited and prayed and offered obeisance at the feet of the Goddess.”
As the days passed, the buzzing devotional energy in the mandapam became ever more palpable. Rituals commenced at 5 a.m. and ended late in the evening, with a 360-wick aarti offered to the erstwhile “cinema goddess” to close each day’s ceremonies. The several delicious meals served each day attracted less devotionally minded visitors, as did the classical dance, vocal, and instrumental performances sprinkled throughout the program along with learned religious and philosophical discourses.
Then there was the ritual; a kaleidoscopic array of ritual—from ancient Vedic chants to modern devotional hymns; from simple kumkum archanas to hours-long Navavarana Pujas. Some were performed by the ritwiks, some by Guruji and Amma, still others by members of the public. After a recitation of the Lalita Sahasranama in the afternoon, puja would be offered to 18 suvasinis representing presiding deities of the Maha Shakti Peetams. Still later, a kumari puja was offered to the children in attendance.
At the conclusion of each day’s events, “the 108 ritwiks would recite the Mantra Pushpam,” an ancient Vedic hymn, Radha recalled. “The whole hall reverberated with melodious chants, touching one’s being to the core.”
One day an old beggar woman appeared and asked Guruji to perform a puja to her. Without hesitation he invited her to sit down, and—with utmost devotion—performed a full suvasini puja to her. He later told Amma, who was at his side throughout the puja, “These are the situations in which the Goddess takes the liberty of testing us. She may come in any form or guise. No one can be ignored or disrespected during this grand event.”
On the 16th day, when the Maha Devi Yagna reached its finale, the Goddess’s image was carried—accompanied by 18 kalasa, again representing the Maha Shakti Peetams—in a final great procession to the sea. “The city turned out to bid an emotional farewell to the Goddess who had become so dear to them,” Sitadevi observed. “With heavy hearts, the procession’s participants submerged her into the sea, where she bobbed up three final times—as if she too were heartbroken to part with her devotees—before finally disappearing beneath the waves.”
With that, Guruji and Amma themselves waded into the surf—in an act of avabrith snanam, or release from a vow fulfilled—before returning to the Simhachalam mandapam for a concluding puja. The final cost of the event was ₹70,000, an expense advanced solely by Guruji from his savings. But when donations from the yagna were tallied, the total collected came to ₹73,000. Thanking the Divine Mother, Guruji deposited the balance into a trust account opened on her behalf, which he named the Sri Vidya Trust.
Reflecting on the event years later, Amma observed, “The Devi Yagna is really where Devipuram began. The rest, as they say, is history.”
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