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Thursday, August 30, 2018

Lord Venkateswara Kalyanam

India is a land of diverse culture, spiritual and religious beliefs. In each part of the country, you will find many folk stories.

I always stress on this that traveling makes you an interesting person because you get to know many things while traveling. When I was in Canada, then once in a year, at the Hindu temple, they used to organize a big Kalyanam i.e. marriage of Lord Venkateswara (a form of Lord Vishnu) with goddess Padmavati. This is a popular event in Southern India. The story or legend behind this goes like as follows:

Sages were performing the fire sacrifice and sage Narada asked them who is the patron deity of this fire sacrifice. Then, another sage went for searching the patron deity and concluded Lord Vishnu as the patron Lord for this fire sacrifice. But, in his event of searching the patron deity, in an incident he got so infuriated that he kicked the Vishnu on his chest, where his consort goddess Lakshmi resides. So, Lakshmi got angry and left her abode and came to the earth for the living. Lord Vishnu also followed her and started living on earth in an anthill without food. God Shiva and Brahma also followed him and started living in a disguise of cow and calf. The disguised used to feed the Vishnu residing in an ant hill and king started questioning the cow herder why the cow gives less milk. And, in a search for giving low milk by the cow, the cow herder attempted to harm the cow and dies himself out of shock when he witnessed Lord Vishnu appearing from the ant hill. Upon this incidence, Vishnu cursed the king. Upon pleading the innocence, Vishnu blessed him to be born as a king and asked him to give his daughters hand to him to end the curse.

So, this is why it is such a big religious event in Andhra Pradesh where the marriage of  Padmavati(i.e. the daughter of the king) occurred with Lord Venkateswara as Srinivasan.

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