Ram temple event spikes demand for priests on Jan 22 in Bengaluru

Many are scheduling housewarmings, homas and marriages to coincide with the Ayodhya temple consecration

Considering it auspicious, Bengalureans are organising pujas in their homes and apartments on January 22, the day the Ram temple will be consecrated in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. 

A majority of priests Metrolife spoke to said their teams will be working at capacity on January 22, a Monday. They said they have turned down many requests because they don’t have enough freelance priests in their network to meet the demand.

A Sanskrit teacher-turned-priest, Shankar Shastri works with 100 freelancers. All of them are booked for two pujas each on January 22, “something that has never happened before”, he said. “People are treating the day as another Diwali,” he said, explaining the enthusiasm.

At home

Shastri’s team will preside over bhoomi pujan (for the construction of a new house), griha pravesh (housewarming ceremony), marriage rituals, birthday puja, and mundan puja (ritual for baby’s first haircut) at homes. They will also conduct akhand Ramayana path (reciting of ‘Ramcharitmanas’) and sundarkand path (about Hanuman).

In apartments

Even Jitendra Pandey’s network of 35 priests is fully booked on Monday. They will conduct pujas for residents of two gated communities in Akshaynagar and Hennur, and at a matha and gaushala in Halasuru. Pandey will also preside over a griha pravesh ceremony and sundarkand path at individual homes that day.

He said calls started pouring in after the consecration date was announced in December. And since Monday is going to be “so busy”, an apartment complex has called him over for a puja a day before, he said.

Manoj Kulkarni’s team of 15 priests will conduct a puja for an apartment complex in Hebbal on January 22. “It will be held in a common area. We will read ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ and the ‘Mahabharata’,” he shared. Additionally, they will travel across the city to perform griha pravesh and pujas related to Ram such as Ram tarak mantra havan and Ram naam bhajan. The clients are from both north and south India, Manoj told Metrolife.

These priests will also carry out special pujas in temples. Shastri will conduct the consecration of a temple in Electronics City on Monday along with 24 priests.

H K Kumaraswamy has been called for Ram tarak homa, bhajana and japa at a Ganesha temple in Basaveshwaranagar in the morning.

Shortage of puja items

“Since the demand for pujas is high, the shops we regularly used to source samagri (items and tools for puja) from ran out of stock. I had to contact other shops,” said Shastri. Other priests did not experience such a shortage in the run-up to Pran Pratishtha (consecration ceremony) in Ayodhya.

However, a senior priest and a priest aggregator platform hadn’t received a single puja enquiry for January 22.

Why January 22...

Priest Shankar Shastri said, “Abhijit Muhurat, Mrigashirsha Nakshatra, Amrit Siddhi Yoga, and Sarvartha Siddhi Yoga are considered auspicious occasions as per Hindu mythology. Ram is said to have been born at the confluence of these occasions. These are falling together on January 22.”