Source: www.piolatorre.it
PALERMO, ITALY, April 29, 2009: As the doors of a crumbling gate open before you, past a steep ramp and gray concrete wall, a colorful and precious pantheon of Deities unfolds. Welcome to the Hindu temple in Palermo.
The place of prayer for the Tamil Mauritian community hides in the former basement of an underground parking garage on Via Malaspina. A shelf with bright tones has a sign asking you to leave your shoes on it, for this is no more a garage, but a temple that “should not be contaminated with anything outside,” says Vinasithamby Ponnambalam, president of ACIROIM (International Association for Cultural Recovery of the East). The association gathers more than 4,000 Tamil residents in the city and preserves the roots of these people fled from Northeast Sri Lanka, because of a civil war.
The temple board is still on the lookout for a better location, and actively working with the government. But that is a long a slow process.
Entering the prayer room, one is dazzled with the many colors of a Hindu place of worship: green, fuchsia, yellow and red predominate. In the paintings, the main female Deity in its three forms: Sarasvati, Lakshmi and Durga.
Behind a screen embroidered in gold is kept the statue of Lord Ganesh, maybe the most important Gods of the Hindu Olympus. As Sri Vinayagar Muttu, he is the patron of this temple. The Elephant God is invoked and prayed before every activity, so that he may protect and bring good decisions. Nearby, on a glittering throne, sits Siva.
The temple is a place for the community to gather to continue their traditions, protect their customs and meet each other. Small booklets written by expert astrologers and numerologists are passed around by parents in search of a match for their sons and daughters, arranging marriages. According to them, the matching astrology is the best assurance for a successful, happy and lasting marriage.
For Ranjini, a devotee who lived in Sri Lanka while her possible husband lived in Palermo, a first contact took place through booklets sent from Italy to her home. After the similarities were recognized, many phone calls followed, then an exchange of pictures, until a few days before the marriage they met for the first time. And now, thirteen years, they are together without a second thought: the horoscope has worked its magic.