Aavani avittams at Thuraiyur

I believe, I was there on all the aavani avittams in Thuraiyur during my schooling. The day starts with all bachelors searching for a saloon in the morning, some of them opened early morning waiting for Iyer pasangal. Most of the times, we will go to the one near Prasanna theatre. One of the traditions that we built over the years is to never pay him at the end of it and it would be Seshadri perippa's next visit which would reveal that 5 of us had a free haircut. One other thing to be very very careful is to explain to him very clearly, how much to cut. Once I remember in my seventh standard, he let his imagination go wild and made me look like a joker.

We'll finish off Sandhi and Samithadhanam very quick coz we know there is hot appam and idly waiting for us. After completing the brunch, we would be headed to the temple, with lots of apparatus, pachapatharam, akshadhai, water, veda books etc. The left side of the Mahasampathgowri sannadhi would be reserved for us.

The function would start with our Sastrigal mama chanting of Yagnopaveetha dhaaranam manthrams. After that is the Vedaarambam, which is the fun part. There are some verses which talk about the holy rivers, towns in India. Here it goes
Kanchipuri-Kasipuri-Madhurapuri etc.
We had come up with a different version doing some extrapolations to honour Kitta mama, who was the manager of Madhurapuri branch.
Kanchipuri-Kasipuri-Madhurapuri-Vaiyapuri-Sikkathambur-Thuraiyur.


It would be Athu or Mani would would be starting this and the entire bay would erupt with laughter. Even Sastrigal mama would enjoy this moment of kalasifying Kitta mama by looking through the corner of his eyes. There is another part, which would also have some tongue twisters and it would be fun to recite :) a - yi- onnu, gyanamana, kapadhashu, gyalanakapadhashu etc. So, after completing things at Temple, we would have Aarati before entering the house and have a great feast.

It was a fantastic time for all of us, these days not able to go to Thuraiyur, and in Madras, not sure if we got Madhurapuris. Miss the fun.