A group of young devotees, led by Prabhakaran, working in Force Motors, Chinchwad, Pune, used to go to the Murugan temple, on the Dehu Road, a suburb of Pune, on a padayatra on the 26 day of January, every year. Suddenly, while on a padayatra a couple of years ago, they thought of building a separate temple for Ganesha.
They had already decided that the idol should be a valam chuzhi Vinayaka as worshipped at Pilllayarpatti in Tamil Nadu. They formed the Padayatra Foundation and decided to collect funds for the proposed temple, walking to each house in the neighbourhood.
The group of youngsters – Prabhakaran, Dharmalingam, Ramamurthy, Narasimhan, Jayasree Nagarajan, Ramakrishnan and Gangadharan – formed a committee and they were determined to construct the temple. However, they did not have the land for it!
Kumbabishekam performed
A Marathi businessman, who came to know about this project, offered a piece of land free of cost in MIDC area, Bhosari, eight km from Pimpri-Chinchwad and about 20 km from Pune city. On a visit to the South, Prabhakaran contacted a sthapathy, Saravanan, and he sculpted an idol similar to the Pillayarpatti Vinayaka.
On October 10, 2010, the kumbabishekam, with the usual rituals and nagaswaram recital, was performed when the locals also joined the Tamil population. Marathis has a special affinity for Ganapati and they voluntarily offered money for annadhanam and vilakku puja. “Well-known playback singer S. Janaki visited this temple,” says a member of the committee.
“Whatever you pray here is fulfilled,” explains Prabhakaran, citing many instances when Lord Ganesha had come to the rescue of the devotees. While the locals call it Kubera Ganapathy, the Tamil devotees have named it Karpaga Vinayakar.
Girija and Narayan, the Tamil couple, living in Chinchwad, frequent the Bhosari temple. “The ten-day Ganapathi festival is celebrated in every area in a grand manner. Recently, the famous Dagdu Sheth Halwai Temple of Lord Ganesha had a group of 65 devotees from China, who sang bhajans with clear diction. They pronounced difficult Marathi and Sanskrit words with ease and clarity. On a visit to Maharashtra, they were practitioners of Sahaja Yoga. According to them, learning these prayers was like therapy. They learnt them easily, as they said these words relax them a lot and give them strength.”
The Karpaga Vinayakar temple is located at Bhosari, Pune, Plot EL 39/8 MIDC, opposite IIMT College.
Devotees who wish to visit the temple or contribute can contact 92256 03176/94220 27881/93733 35975.
