Thiru Cherai Venkatesh Bhattar Next Gen

The anti hindi agitation of the 1960s impacted many quite negatively in the temple circles. But for this priest, the learning of Hindi has helped turnaround dramatically the fortunes for his family. 

In the 1980s, Thiru Mangai Azhvaar praised Thiru Cherai Saranathan Divya Desam was in a terrible state. The original inhabitants had moved away from this Divya Desam. There was no salary, no devotees, no thattu kaasu for the hereditary priests. The utsavams too had stopped. And the priests wondered as to what lay in store for them. Their forefathers had served at the temple for several decades earlier but now the situation was so grim that they had to take unprecedented calls. 

In addition to the service at this Divya Desam, hereditary priest Gopalakrishnan Bhattar worked at the nearby textile mills run by the now renowned Raasi Silks. They had a factory near the Saranatha Perumal temple that provided employment to a couple of hundred workers. He received a few hundred rupees there.  Now 67, he recounts that phase in the 1980s at Thiru Cherai “Ours was a large joint family. I also performed Thiru Aradhanam at a few village temples but it was largely a hand to mouth existence in the 1980s.”

Towards the end of that decade, he got an unexpected offer from the Rang Ji Temple in Pushkar, Rajasthan at a salary of Rs. 250. Being an historical location, this temple attracted devotees even back there. He served there for a couple of decades.

His younger son 34 year old Venkatesh Bhattar who now serves at the Saranatha Perumal Divya Desam in Thiru Cherai spent his entire schooling life at Pushkar focusing on academics. He credits  the great devotee support in the region for the sustenance there  “My school fees were taken care of by devotees. They also paid for a lot of our expenses.”

At the turn of the century, the family returned to Thiru Cherai and immediately Gopalakrishna Bhattar entrusted the then 16year old Venkatesh to Kannan Bhattar and his son Vasan Bhattar of Therazhundur Aamaruvippan Divya Desam (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2021/09/therazhundur-vasan-bhattar.html). 

Venkatesh Bhattar dedicates his entire life to the two priests at Therazhundur “They took great care of me. I spent an entire decade at their house. Vasan Bhattar saw me almost as his own son. I learned everything relating to Agama from him and his appa serving every day with them since 2005. Ever since, the Perumal of Therazhundur has been very close to my heart. Even today, I spend a lot of time performing service at Therazhundur. What I am today in life is only because of Kannan and Vasan Bhattar.”

At Thiru Cherai, the family has hereditary service of 7 ½ days each at Perumal and Thayar Sannidhi.

His knowledge of Hindi and the network he had built in the North during his first 15years meant he received offers from multiple temples outside of Tamil Nadu. For almost 15years, he has been anchoring the Brahmotsavam at the Srinivasa Perumal temple in Amritsar. “I did the Maasi Brahmotsavam in 2009 following the consecration of the temple. The trustees liked my devotion and the way I conducted the utsavam. A big comfort factor for them was the fact that they could converse with me in Hindi. They now see me as one in their family.”

He has also been leading the utsavams at Ramanuja Koodam and Srinivasa Perumal in Ujjain and has been a regular there for a decade. There have also been other opportunities in North and Central India. “It has been a big turnaround, financially. The trustees of these trustees treat me really well. They have great regard for our agamic knowledge. We are taken care of well on all fronts including financially.”

His elder brother, Varadaraja Bhattar (Vasanth) learned the agama from Krishna Kumar Bhattar of Parthanpalli Divya Desam and he has been serving at the Rama temple in Delhi over the last decade.

After the exit of Jawahar Bhattar (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2021/04/pancharatra-agama-archakar-kannan.html) who had served there for many years, Venkatesh Bhattar and his appa also served at the Appakudathan Divya Desam in Thiruper Nagar, Koviladi (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/11/108-divya-desam-koviladi-appakudathaan.html) on the Northern Banks of Cauvery. Almost a decade later, he married the daughter of the Paricharaka of this Divya Desam in a most traditional ceremony at the peak of the Pandemic.

While the move from Thiru Cherai was a tough call for Gopalakrishnan Bhattar back then in the late 1980s, it has now brought a windfall to Venkatesh Bhattar. Growing up in Central India, he took to Hindi almost as first language and became very fluent in conversations. That fluency in Hindi has helped him create a niche for himself through the utsavam opportunities in temples in the North. From the financial poverty in the family in the 1970s and 80s, Venkatesh Bhattar has turned it around and his future as a priest looks rosy. In the process, he has also created lucrative financial opportunities for close to ten other priests in the Chozha region as they too accompany him for the annual utsavams there. 

There was a time in the decades gone by when priests in remote temples including in Divya Desams sat at the temple entrance waiting for a devotee to arrive but on most days in the year that proved elusive and they returned home without any financial returns. But now, this priest has a packed schedule through the year with very little free time. Brahmotsavams and Pavitrotsavams in multiple temples in the North and consecration events in TN temples as part of Vasan Bhattar’s team keep him busy. In addition, over the last decade and half, there has also been a turnaround at the Saranatha Perumal temple in Thiru Cherai with all the utsavams seeing a grand revival. Overall it is a happy state of mind for this young priest.