The Gods go out . . .
After the teppam, comes the picnic.
Lord Murugan and his consorts will be taken out to what once must been wooded beyonds of Mylapore. The areas of Mandaveli and Raja Annamalaipuram.
The annual tour will be held on Sunday, Feb.12 with the deities first taken to the mantap on R. K. Mutt Road, near the Mandaveli Post office. They will remain here for darshan from about 10 am to noontime.
Later, the procession will vend its way to the Amman temple campus in Kapali Vannabhojanai Thottam where devotees can worship from 3 to 5 pm that day.
The group at this Thottam which is a thickly-populated quarter at the south end of R. A. Puram says that it had to take legal recourse to get the temple department to re-start this ageold practice after it was stopped.
The practice celebrates the legend that the Lord moved out so that communities who lived elsewhere could worship easily.
