Divine......

Seeing the lime diyas lit in front of the Attukal Temple in Trivandrum during our visit this time brought back a lot of memories.....

As kids, every year we used to come to Kerala for our vacations and every vacation one day we would  go to the nearby temple to light 101 lime diyas. I used to be all excited about it because all my cousins and aunts used to come to help my mother out and it was a fun day! We would all have lunch at my house and then carry the limes, oil, cotton to light the diya, matches and knifes and head out to the temple.

I was usually in charge of squeezing out the juice from the cut limes and what fun it was! I would race to squeeze all the juice out and pass the limes onto my aunt to turn them inside out and pour oil in them. By late evening we would be done....having placed all the limes in front of the deity, oil poured in each one and the cotton threads ready to be lit. And then we would light them as the priest recited the evening prayers......I still have a vivid memory of the smell of incense and flowers, the sounds of bells ringing and birds fluttering back to their trees and the beautiful light from all the lamps lit...... 

Returning home all happy and sticky from the lime juice and glowing from the prayers, I used to wait for the same day next year......

Leena