Sanjeev K Sharma
JAMMU, Mar 19: Braving the continuous rainfall, devotees of the Goddess in Jammu continued visiting the temples and shrines on Thursday much before the sun was up, as it was the first Chaitra Navratra today.
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“Using umbrellas and rain coats, the devotees continued even from 4 am but after 7 in the morning the pilgrims paid no heed to the rainfall,” said Sanjeev Sharma, who runs a shop in Katra where Prasad is sold to the visiting pilgrims.
He estimated the number of pilgrims that moved towards the cave shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi Ji on Trikuta Hills today to be 20,000.
“Till 11 in the evening our shops remain open to serve the visiting devotees and we saw that there was no fall in enthusiasm of the visiting devotees despite the continuous rainfall,” Sharma maintained.
However, the number of devotees remained about 2000 at popular Chichi Mata temple in district Samba.
Bansi Lal Sharma, the temple priest informed that the visiting devotees mostly remained locals from adjoining areas but some from outside areas also paid obeisance at the shrine and there was proper arrangement in place by the temple authorities for the visiting devotees.
Similar inputs were received from Jasrota temple near Hiranagar in district Kathua, Mangla Devi temple in Nowshera in district Rajouri and also from many other places.
Mahant Bitta Pujari at popular Bawe Wali Mata temple in Jammu informed that the continuous rainfall hit the number of visiting devotees but still about 1000 devotees have visited the shrine to pay obeisance and get blessings of the deity.
Ankush Khajuria, who runs a Prasad shop at Bawe Wali Mata temple, informed that rainfall hit the number of visiting devotees but still a good number of them visited the shrine to get blessing of the Goddess.
Many other shopkeepers informed that though they had a good business today but not to the expected level as it was continuous rainfall. However, they expect more profits in days to come as the rain is likely to end tomorrow or day after.
Similar was the scenario at ancient Kol Kandoli temple at Nagrota, which is the first Darshan for Mata Vaishno Devi pilgrimage.
“Though rain displayed its might but still about 1000 devotees visited the shrine and got blessings of the revered deity,” said Pandit Jai Kumar Sharma, Head Priest at the temple adding that all the scheduled programmes of the temple continued smoothly as per the schedule.
Special on the first Navratra was that all the temples and shrines of the revered Goddess were beautifully decorated with different flowers brought from other States while extraordinary lighting works was also done which brightened these shrines throughout the night.
Langars were organised at most of the temples for the visiting devotees where special dishes were also available for those who were observing Navratra fasts.
Shops in Jammu city and at many other places have stocked items like coconuts, Chunris, eatables for fasting people etc.
The presence of cops and other security personnel in adequate number at most of the temples and at other sensitive areas was there to prevent any untoward incident from anti-social elements.
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