Venkateshwara Swamy Face Close up
Tirumala Tirupati Temple is gaining more and more significance day by day, due to the divine beauty of Lord Venkateswara. Though we want to watch his divine appearance for a few minutes, but due to huge crowd, which would mostly prevail in the temple, we are allowed to witness the divine beauty of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala only for a few seconds!
The great Saint Annamacharya has mentioned in one of his divine works, “Oh my dear Venkateswara, whenever I visit your temple, I am unable to leave from that place. My eyes even didn’t blink on seeing your wonderful appearance. My belly didn’t claim any food, since even it is interested to watch your divine beauty. My legs have become very much stronger during my visit to your lovely abode Tirumala. I would be able to lift any big things on my hands, since my hands were bowed at you in your temple. My soul is filled up with full of spiritual energy during my visit to your temple. Totally, my entire body has become a slave to you, since all of my body parts have witnessed your divine appearance, and it asks me to do like that, again and again”.
Lord Venkateswara is very fond of his devotees, irrespective of their caste, creed, gender and status. The Green Camphor, also known as Pachai Karpooram in Tamil, would be placed under the chin of Sri Venkateswara Swamy, and this was become practicable due to the request of a staunch devotee of Lord Venkateswara.
Once, the most popular Vaishnava saint Ramanuja has asked one of his devotees, to develop a flower garden for Lord Venkateswara in Tirumala, the sacred abode of Venkateswara. The devotee Ananthazhwar also has accepted his request and developed a wonderful flower garden for the Lord of seven hills. Since he found it difficult to do the gardening job single-handedly, he sought the help of his pregnant wife, to join with him in his gardening work. But since the pious woman found it very difficult to do such kind of hard work,one day, the great Lord Venkateswara has taken the form of a young boy, and began to help her. After seeing this, at one point of time, Ananthazhwar has got very angry with the boy and he hit the boy with a weapon on the chin.
The boy immediately disappeared from that place, but when Ananthazhwar has visited the shrine of Lord Venkateswara, he found that blood was oozing out from the chin of the Lord.He immediately realized his mistake, sought apology to the god, and also he Applied Camphor (karpuram) for the injury.Lord Venkateswara was very much pleased with the act of Ananthalwar, and in order to show his selfless bhakti to the entire world, Lord Venkateswara has ordered the then priests of Tirumala to apply the Camphor on his chin forever.
Thus, the Camphor is applied to the main idol’s chin even till today.Similar to this incident, there are lot of wonderful incidents happened in the lives of his devotees, in which, the great Lord Venkateswara has showered his abundant grace on to his devotees. Hence, let us make a habit of visiting the Tirumala Temple, which is considered to be the Bhuloka Vaikunda, earthly abode of Lord Venkateswara, at least once in a year, and let us be blessed.
“OM NAMO VENKATESAYA”
WRITTEN BY
R.HARISHANKAR