Palani Panchamirtham
Palani Panchamirtham Episode:
When I was doing my engineering at GCT, Coimbatore, we civil engineering students had a survey project and were taken to a village by name Madathukulam some 40 miles south of Coimbatore. We were accompanied by our lecturer and were put up in a camp. Every morning we went on survey quite early to beat the sun, had a break for a few hours till lunch and then continued our survey till evening. As we could expect, villagers became curious to know what for and why we were carrying out the survey. To give them a false satisfaction, we students used to bluff that a new road project was on the anvil and to facilitate it, we were carrying out a preliminary survey. The villagers got interested and were willing to extend all help to us. But spending time there in that village was an arduous task. On a particular day, after finishing our work, still a full half a day was left and not knowing what to do for the rest of the day, some of us ( and I am one of those some) planned to have an outing for the afternoon. The temple town Palani was just 18 miles from there and three of us decided to go to Palani by walk, walk being a favourite pastime for all the three of us. We took permission from our lecturer to go to Palani but with a warning that we must return by the next morning. A bus normally took an hour to cover this distance. So we thought that by catching the earliest bus, we would be banpck by 7:00A.M at our survey spot.
We took with us a big school bag, filled it with a mixture of groundnut, puffed rice,roast gram ,peas (கடலை, பொரி, பொட்டுக்கடலை, பட்டாணி) and so on and started walking all the way ( 18miles) towards Palani to have a Darshan of Lord Muruga. A walk to Palani is believed to be a way of propitiating Lord Muruga, a short (or a long!) cut to get His divine grace. As we were walking along, we were discussing the latest pictures which we had seen, the politics of the day, other cock and bull stories and also about the pending part of the project work.
By the time we reached Shanmuga river, on the outskirts of Palani, we found that the bag containing the mixture ( more than about 3Kg) was empty. We took a plunge into the river, washed ourselves of our sins and satisfied with our piety, walked to the foothills of the temple and without much hesitation or effort, climbed to the top of the hill where lord Muruga came to stay after his tiff with his father over the mango fruit. We broke some coconuts to please the Lord, consumed a major part of it ourselves and parted with the remaining with the beggars and the monkeys there. By then, it had become dark and after the Dharshan of the lord which took nearly an hour, decided to skip our meals after taking some (not some but sumptuous) Panchamirtham (பஞ்சாமிர்தம்- the five fruit nectar) for which Palani Temple was and is very famous.
I wanted to purchase Panchamirtham for my friends and some relatives ( as most people do for their families and friends) as proof of my Palani visit and as a testimony of my goodwill towards them. I asked for one full bottle of the nectar , but found that it was only three fourths filled. I was not a person who could be duped so easily and I told the shopkeeper not to try to cheat me because I was a college student, but to fill the bottle upto the brim and give it. He pleaded that the nectar would ferment and so it was the usual practice for them to fill it only three fourths, to provide space for fermentation. I was not prepared to purchase the story and told him in no uncertain terms that I couldn't be duped like that and that the bottle should be filled up to the brim.
Seeing that I couldn't be taken for a ride, he yielded to my threat or request or whatever it was and gave me the bottle filled and tightly closed. Once the deal was over, we looked for some shelter to spend the night. We couldn't succeed in our efforts, since we didn't have enough money with us for that purpose. We occupied some corner space available that was left in the outer Prakara (பிரகாரம்) of the temple free, with no beggar competing with us and spent our night there. But the mixture of nuts, pulses, cereals, coconuts and Panchamirtham proved to be very unsympathetic to my stomach and they started revolting. As one having a very weak stomach, my reaction was very intense with severe pain and the rest of the night proved to be quite excruciating. Pain or no pain, the day had to dawn and did dawn. I told my friends that we must rush back to Madathukulam by the first available bus.
We tracked down the hill fast and took the first available bus and rushed (bus didn't rush, it was going in its usual pace) to Madathukulam. By the time, I reached the place, it started purging, thank God, that it waited till I reached the right place, and once relieved, I went to my lecturer asking him to permit me to go to the hostel at Coimbatore in view of my stomach indisposition. Understanding the situation and realising that there were no good medical facilities in the village, my lecturer was kind enough to permit me to go to Coimbatore immediately. I got every thing packed, particularly, the Panchamirtham that was well inside the bottle with no fermentation of the sort happening as threatened by the shopkeeper, patting myself on the prudent purchase which I made and bidding goodbye to all my friends, including the two who had a marathon walk with me and who also gulped all that I swallowed , but with nothing happening to them (lord Muruga is very partial) left for Coimbatore.
Once I reached the hostel, I reported to the doctor there who gave me some pills and you won't believe that I felt very normal within the next few hours with no symptoms whatsoever of any stomach trouble. I didn't know whom to thank, the doctor or Lord Muruga, but not wanting to displease any one of them, I thanked them both wholeheartedly within myself.
My cousin's marriage was to take place the next day at Kodumudi at a distance of about 80 miles from Coimbatore. I had already chalked out a plan to attend that marriage and keeping that in view only, I purchased one big bottle full of Panchamirtham. Taking it with me along with my other baggages, I left for Kodumudi and reached the place for the "Mappillai Azhaippu" (மாப்பிள்ளை அழைப்பு- a premarriage ceremony introducing the bridegroom and the bride). The next morning when the propitious hour "muhurtham" (முகூர்த்தம்) was over, I opened my bag to distribute the prasadam i.e., Panchamirtham to the man of the ceremony, i.e., to the bride groom(மாப்பிள்ளை), who was my cousin and to some of my other very close relatives.
When I opened my bag, I found the clothes sticky and wet and I found that the cover of the Panchamirtham bottle was six inches above the mouth of the bottle, the entire stretch of six inches streaked with the semisolid nectar all over my clothes that I had reserved and kept for the occasion and when I looked at the bottle pitiably, I found that it was more than half empty with the remaining half smeared in my pants, shirts and so on.
I closed the bottle immediately went to the backyard of the house where the marriage celebration was going on, washed the outside of the bottle well, came back to tell my people proudly that I brought the nectar specially for them and distributed to them whatever balance was available, keeping within myself the bitter fact of half of the sweet Panchamirtham disappearing and merging with my clothes. With all my dresses smeared with the holy nectar, I was left with no other alternative except to wear the same set of dresses which I used on the first evening on the other two days of my stay there. So even nectar can become bitter on certain occasions. That was the moral of the story, nay, the incident.
Thus my Palani Panchamirtham adventure came to a sweet but sticky end! Panchamirtham might have pleased Lord Muruga but has displeased me fomenting trouble because of its unwanted fermentation spoiling my clothes and my mood on an otherwise pleasant occasion! I thought it was Lord Muruga punishing me for his failure in getting the mango fruit from his father.
