WEST TEXAS, U.S., January 9, 2014 (Midland Reporter Telegram): Priesthood is a family tradition for Vignesh Mahadevarahalli, the priest at the Hindu Association of West Texas. His father, grandfather and ancestors were all priests, passing on the customs and traditions from generation to generation. Mahadevarahalli has been priest of the Hindu temple in Midland since early 2008.
Growing up in a small village in Karnataka, India called Mahadevarahalli, he learned basic priestly traditions from his father. At age 12, he left home and moved nearly 200 miles away to begin his formal priest education at Maha Vidyalaya, a school in nearby Mysore, India. The course took 13 years to complete. He spent five of those years learning Agama, the practical methods of priesthood, and seven years at a temple in Bangalore.
He landed in Flint, Mich., where he worked at a Hindu temple for four and a half years. Through a relative of a devotee in Michigan, Mahadevarahalli learned about a new temple being built in Texas that needed a priest. He arrived in Midland in April 2008 to become priest at the Hindu Association of West Texas, which recently celebrated its temple’s sixth anniversary.
About 400 Hindu families live in the Midland/Odessa area, which keeps Mahadevarahalli, the only Hindu priest in the Permian Basin, quite busy. Along with his everyday temple duties, he travels as far as San Angelo, Lubbock and Big Spring to conduct pujas at families’ homes. He performs pujas for housewarmings, new cars, weddings, newborn babies, naming ceremonies, after-death rituals and many more. It’s a culmination of all the knowledge he learned during his years of schooling in India.
More at ‘source’.