Big celebration of Deepavali at Grays Lake temple

CHICAGO: Grays Lake Hindu temple along with scores of others in Chicagoland celebrated Deepavali with lot of enthusiasm and devotion spanning three days beginning November 1 to Dhanteras Poojan by Pt Joshi Ji with hundreds of devotees.

Kali Chaudas Poojan on the second day was performed by a large number of people. Pandit Ji requested devotees to wear black dresses and bring black offerings made with black sesame and jaggery. Ma Durga was also dressed with beautiful black saree. Ladies performed Chausat Yogin Devi Poojan and gents performed Lord Bharava poojan. On Deepavali day, a beautiful saree was offered to Ma Durga made with different country currencies, which was unique and unusual. Geetha Patil had made this saree deeming it Vaibhav Alankar. This was the main attraction of the festival for hundreds of devotees.

Rangoli and hundreds of diyas were lighted in the temple with prayers for inner enlightenment. Deepavali poojan was started with Lord Ganesh, and Ma Laxmi poojan and archana followed by Maha Mangalarati and Prasadam. Melodious devotional Bhajans were sung by Rita Patel, Atul Soni and Kamlesh Desai. Laxmi Prasad in the form of blessed coins was distributed to all devotees.

On November 9, the temple celebrated Annakut where people offered their thanks to Lord Krishna by presenting various vegetarian delicacies with lot of devotion. According to Pandit Anil Joshi, in Dwapara Yuga, people offered home-made food to Shri Govardhan Parvat as directed by Lord Krishna. From that day people started offering Annakut to Lord Krishna every year after Deepavali.

This year almost 120 items were offered by devotees to Lord Krishna, Balaji, Ram Parivar and Ma Durga equally for the first time on the Mata ki Chowki day. Poojan was started by 5:30pm and Bhajans were sung by Anu Gupta, Naveen Mishra and their team. Pandit Ganeshji and Joshiji offered Bhoga to the deities and Maha Mangalarati was performed followed by Maha Prasadam. Pandit Joshi gave blessings for prosperity, harmony, peace, purity and spiritual upliftment to all devotees and requested all the India community people to come together on one platform for all the future functions. He also gave vote of thanks to volunteers and devotees.

Surendra Ullal