Chitra Pournami

The day is Saturday, May 13. My tear off calendar says today is Chitra Pournami. It is the full moon of the Hindu month of Chitra, when the star Chitra (Virginis) is close to the moon. Several New Years came before this, including Ugadi (the Telugu New Years day), Tamil New Years day, and Holi-Baisakhi. Every religion has something very dear to celebrate and Chitra Pournami is one such occasion celebrated in parts of South India. Despite the hatred that exists among various sects of humanity, such festive occasions bring a fresh promise of renewal and joy to its followers.

Chitra Pournami is considered as the birthday of a very important person in the celestial world: Chitragupta, the Keeper of Deeds who assists Yama, the God of death. It is believed that Chitragupta keeps the good and bad deeds register of every birth that helps tally your positive karma against the negative. Chitragupta is remembered on this day. I am not sure if this was just an ancestral device to alert us on our conduct and put us on the path of austerity.

Chitra Poornima is also sacred to remembering your mothers. Austerities done on this day are supposed to please the mothers. Suggested activities on this day include: An early bath, praying for the welfare of your mother and giving them gifts, performing a good deed like helping/feeding somebody, sitting peacefully and praying to be cleansed of emotional toxins: anger, bitterness, revenge, jealousy. It is interesting to note that tomorrow Mothers Day will be celebrated in the USA.

There’s also the legend that Indra, king of the celestials, once managed to offend Brihaspati or Guru and was forced to come down to earth for expiation. He spotted a Shivalingam under a kadamba tree and this struck him as so auspicious that he worshipped it with a golden lotus from a pond nearby. This feeling of piety and repentance in his manas heart, formalised externally as worship, redeemed him from his sin. The day was Chitra Pournami and the place where his penance was performed and accepted is Madurai. Indra is believed to have built a temple there and even today, in the great Madurai Meenakshi temple, Devendra Puja is observed on Chitra Pournami while in the grand Vaishnava temples like Tirupati and Azhagarkoil, devotees bathe in the natural springs.