Trip to Melukote

On April 21st Vidhya and I joined her parents and her sister on a trip to Melukote. Melukote is a temple on the top of a hill that is around 30kms from Mandya town. Its an Iyengar temple that is dedicated to Lord Vishnu in one of his avatars.

The Melukote Temple


Now at the foothills of this temple is another temple. There was a ratha utsavam in this temple on the day that we went. We saw a utsava murthy inside the temple and also the ratham enclosure was open and the ratham was fully visible. So we realised that there would be a ratha utsavam soon and we stayed on to take a look. Ratham means chariot and utsavam means festivity. So ratha utsavam refers to a festive occasion where they take the temple god on a trip around the town in a chariot. Since the main temple idol is fixed in place and is a large sized one usually, there is a smaller idol kept in the temple which is used for such festivities. This is the utsava murthy, where murthy means idol.


The Utsavamurthy in the chariot, surrounded by the Guardians, held by the Priest


It is believed that pulling the ratham brings you luck as you are sort of serving god. So lot of people come together to pull the chariot. If not pull the chariot then at least many come and touch the chains and take the blessings from god. This chain is so heavy that it needs at least a few dozen people to just lift it off the ground and even more to pull the chariot. In fact there are such huge rathams created that it need hundreds of people to get it into motion.


People pulling the Ratham



Wedges used to control the speed of the chariot and turn it while pulling

Since the chariot is so heavy, once it is set into motion it will move forward uncontrollably. So, these wedges are place a few inches in front of the wheel so that it doesn't gain speed and doesn't roll away. They are also used selectively under either wheel and the chariot is turned using this method.



From the back of the chariot, these crowbar arrangements are used to turn the wheels. 3-4 people climb on the crowbar to weigh it down. Thats the enormity of the effort.


Continuous drumming to egg on the contributors to put in effort.


More photos available on my online album.