Planned Festivities: The festivities will start on the evening of Thursday 28th May and end at 2 pm on Sunday 31st May 2015.
The initial work involves inspecting every deity and the Sanctum Sanctorum. The descendants of “Shri Vishwakarma ji” must do this. Accordingly, qualified shilpis from other temples in the United States will initiate this process in March 2015. This will be followed by the maintenance of the Sanctum, including painting, touch-ups on the marble deities, and caulking with Ashtabandhana to ensure a watertight seal between the vigraha (idol) and the peetam (pedestal). This is done using a special mixture containing eight special ingredients to adhere the vigraha to the peetam; indeed this paste is made by the shilpis in a special ceremony. It is believed that the proper Ashtabandhana using the eight special herbs mixed with wood lac, limestone power, resin, red ochre, beewax and butter keeps the idol rejuvenated for 12 years. However, if the Bandhanam is performed with gold (Swarnabandhanam), the rejuvenated power of the deity lasts about 100 years. Since it is nice to have these festivities more often, in our Temple we planned to perform Ashtabandhana.
During this period starting early March 2015, all the Utsava Murthies (surrogates of main deities) will move to a new Location (probably north west rooms) for daily pujas. Also for those deities without Utsava Murthies (Jagannath Parivar, Laxmi ji, Saraswathy ji and Navagraha), Agama Shastra allows KALASHA to be used. Temple will never be closed. Also, since daily pujas will be performed at a new location starting early March 2015, for safety and liability reasons it is better that none of devotees go on the temple side, where maintenance work will continue.
Starting Thursday 28th May through 31st May 2015, many festivities are planned. These include: Vedic Yagnya (Havan), Jeeva Kala Avahana and Kalasha Sthaspana, cultural programs, and Kumbhabhishekam.
