KULA DEIVOM ET ALL

I ran to my family astrologer . ‘ what’s wrong doctor?’ he quipped.I handed over my jataka ‘please help me’ ‘But what’s the problem?,first take your seat and relax,no need to panic.’ I felt relieved at his fatherly gesture ‘.My problem is ---is--- is that I don’t have any problem and this thought itself is killing me,my mind is running amok without any problem.Till date I have been surviving just on problems alone’.The astrologer looked surprised,but any way accepted my jathaka.Just for once he gazed intensively at my face and started counting his fingers,itching his bald head and the colums of the grahas started telling their story.He took his own sweet time and declared ‘ doctor, sani dasa has started 2 yrs back and it’s going to be a long 18 yrs,if you survive.Now it’s the rahu apaharam which has usherd in this crisis.You have to be very careful.you will make plenty of enemies especially your close relatives.Don’t open your mouth or pen.,never blog. I was desperate at his last word. ‘Is there any parihara?’ He once again glanced at the piece of paper,and declared ‘run to your kula deivom,he may be of help’,and dismissed me with a glance.
This kula deivom business is a tricky one as far as my family is concerned.,because frankly I have to confess before you all, I don’t have any clues as to who it was or is .As usual I typed the word in google and began the search .The definition came as the guardian of the family or clan. And he is supposed to attend to only family problems and please note.not personal problems!,which means,he will negotiate in case of family disputes, inherited property disputes like undivided hindu family act,inherited medical problems,problems which hinders with the breeding of successive generations,like marriage,infertility etc etc.There is another set of gods called ishta deivathas ,who will deal with personal problems of the individuals,like a personal physician,and the so called specialist gods who deal with special problems only,like the naga devathas for infertility, deities for marriage,divorce,education,fine arts,those who deal with amassing of wealth like tirupathy perumal,even gynaec problems are attended in a devi temple near Alwaye.Then there are the deities before whom you are enslaved and he becomes your master and you his slave,but he is supposed to guard you once you remit the adima panam in annual premiums..Hence there is much confusion as to whom you approach,especially since these deities are not always in the best of terms with each other ,hence the issue of conflict of interests prop up and the bhaktha is always in a state of mental turmoil or ectasy as you may call it ...
Now coming to my problem, from my paternal grandfather onwards each of the eldest male progeny has been made the adimai[slave] of Lord Ayyappa at Thakazhy near Haripad where my grand father ruled the three worlds in 3 acres and we had been made to believe that he is our kula deivom and we all used to go to that temple for our personal and family prolems and also to show gratitude to our master for our survival.But even then I had my own doubts,but generally accepted the fact that our kula deivom as SASTHA was safe in some remote corner of Tamil nadu and that my thatha [grand father] had given the proxy to Ayyappa of Thakazhy due to the distance factor.So for the last 50 years we were quite happy with the master at Thakazhy.Its only few years back I came to know from my father that the original deity was in Kongarayarkurissy near Tirunelveli and there were various postulates regarding the deity,some said it was Dharma sastha,others alleged Dakshinamoorthy, Bhairavar etc.
So with all these doubts and much curiosity most of the family decided to have a go and at short notice we went for the kill .Me and my family went to Tirunelvei by train along with Murali and family.At Tirunelveli we visited the Nellayappar temple and soon was joined by the other members of the clan who came in a mini van from Thiruvananthapuram and the whole batch went to Vallanad the alleged original place from where our ancestors lived and migrated to Kerala via the Shenkottai pass.The Vallanad village is located roughly one and a haf hours drive from tirunelveli in the Tuticorin route.There we had a halt in Vallad agraharam comprising around 90 houses with a Perumal temple.From there to Kongarayarkurissi was a 30 minutes drive and lo we had landed in front of our kula deivom.
It’s a compact beautifully dilapidated temple,the main deity being Lord Siva as Sri Veera Pandeeswarar in the linga form. Inside the temple there is sannidi of Lord Sattanathar,Dakshinamoorthy, Devi as Ponnuruthi Amman,Ganapathi, Subramania, and Nagadevathai .We came to know that Lord SATTANATHAR a manifestation of Lord Bhairavar,the ferocious form of Siva is our kula deivom.The deity is really beautiful with all its alankaras with four hands one holding the udukkai and another one holding the staff with anklets of snakes in the hands and the vahanam is also the snake in contrast to Bhairavar whose vahanam is dog.We learned from the temple staff that the sannidi of Sattanathar is very rare and that there is a big sannidi of Sattanathar at Seerkazhy Siva temple,where special pujas are conducted every Friday at 10 in the night.The mythology of Sattanathar is that Lord Siva manifested as Sattanathar to quell the ahangara of Lord Trivikrama [Vamana] afterTrivikrama conquered all the worlds and the Bharavar adorned the skin of Trivikrama as his dress[sattai] and the bones as his staff,hence the name Sattanathar..