Temples have begun to commercial, or well they always were, was the debate as we walked into the beautiful Vellore Golden Temple built to worship the Goddess Lakshmi, the consort of Lord Venkateswara and the pseudo-Mom of Lord Ganesha who was given to her by his mother Goddess Parvati. This temple houses both Lord Ganesha and Lord Venkateshwara but Goddess Lakshmi is the Lorddess here, well am surprised how Lorddess isn’t a work in English as I find it called out in my paragraph(!), however, in this Temple the main shrine is for Lorddess Lakshmi and what a beautiful shrine it is. Emerging from a pond of water, sculpted to perfection this beautiful Garbha Griha or the inner sanctum is enmeshed in pure gold and all that glitters is definitely gold.
The star shaped walkway leads one from the main entrance into the temple of the divine Goddess and on the way of the main road leading to the star-shaped walkway are the shrines of the Husband and the pseudo-son of the Goddess. Till my visit to the temple I always worshipped Lord Ganesha before a Lakshmi pooja but was only learning then on the why, that’s because when Parvati loaned Ganesha to Goddess Lakshmi as a son he became a part of the worship of the Vaishnavites, also becoming the tying factor between the devotees of Shiva and Vishnu. What a beautiful way the Hindu deities all come together.
My favourite Goddess all decorated in all her glory is depicted in this beautiful Golden temple, fit for the Goddess of wealth and prosperity! Everything that the Goddess is believed to love is earmarked in the design of the temple, the lotus, the conch, the owl, the Shri or as IAST helps us say Sri, a moniker used to illustrate all that this beautiful Goddess symbolises, the curly hair, all astrologers believe that the curls on the head is symbolism for the Goddess herself, the owl, the elephants showering prosperity, beauty that the Goddess loves, white and pink and all else that epitomises the Goddess. The root word of the name Lakshmi is literally translated to knowing your lakshya or knowing your goal. In the Rigveda though the Goddess is purely referred to as Sri while Lakshmi is more from the Puranic texts.
Tossing a coin into the water body that the main inner sanctum of the temple rises from is to amplify the quality of prosperity, as water is said to amplify things, well thankfully it doesnt do the same to humans in water ;), but swelling is a quality associated with water, and in this pond we found currency notes too tossed in! The walk to the main temple is dotted by quotations and motivational lines that help the devotees reflect on words of wisdom in multiple languages as one makes their way to the main temple. The Goddess decorated in all her glory was a delight to see and the alankaram as they say for decoration was befitting that of a Lorddess! A beautiful, stunning and divine experience in all, all in a day!
Vedasri Siddamsetty 