Visit To the Sengazhuneer Amman Temple

This year on my birthday I desired to spend the evening near the beach. The beach has been one of my favourite haunts from the time I came to Pondicherry. The movement of the waves back and forth reminds me of the twists and turns of our lives. It showcases for me the sadness, the joy, the pleasure, the anger, the despair and many other such emotions that grip me during the journey through life. On this birthday, I wanted to be in a beach where I could dip my feet in water and feel the nip of the waves that frothed around my feet. The Pondy city beach has become a nerve wracking experience Every time I approach the water, a coastal guard or a policeman blows his whistle and asks me to move away. While I understand the dangers of the coast, it feels excessive when I’m merely standing at the water’s edge, with the waves only occasionally brushing my feet. It’s a bit absurd. Anyway, to enjoy myself and have time near the waters, I decided to go to Chinna Veerampattinam.
This visit was awesome. My only regret is that I had not been there earlier. The sea and the beach just made my b’day memorable and precious. It felt as if the sea kissed my feet and waving wishes for delightful magical days ahead.
Besides the sea, what added a icing to the event was the temple, Sengazhuneer Amman Temple. I am sure there are tons of people who have written about it. I enjoyed the bliss of the temple as there was hardly any crowd and I could stand in front of the goddess however long I wanted. The temple was no way an architectural marvel but I gathered from the priest that it may be over 1000 years old.

According to the legends regarding the origin of the temple the tale is that a fisherman ( in various stories written about the place the fisherman is named as Veeraraghavan) fishing could not get any catch one day but managed to snare a wood log. Thinking that he could use it as firewood he carried it home and kept it in his backyard. One day his wife wishing to use it for preparing food, tried to cut the log into small pieces and to her horror found that wherever she had struck, a red liquid similar to blood oozed out. She alerted her husband, who thought it was some form of an animate creature and began to worship it. Gradually, he found that his circumstances changed and he was becoming affluent. One night, the goddess (Amman) appeared to him in a dream, asking him to place the log in a sacred spot, build a temple, and honour her as Sengazhuneer Amman. The fisherman informed the neighbours and other villagers and together they began to search for the sacred spot. They eventually found an ant hill sheltering a cobra and thinking that could be the spot, and constructed a simple structure which over time grew into a full-fledged structure, complete with a temple chariot—one of the first in the Pondicherry region. The goddess here is said to be powerful, and the temple has become a place of great reverence.