The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/P>
PHILADELPHIA, USA, May 12, 2004: (HPI Note: Mother’s Day is May 8, Sunday.) On Saturday, Savita Patel got the usual Mother’s Day treatment from her three children: flowers, dinner and a gift certificate to a spa. Yesterday, Patel, a Langhorne resident who was born in India, was honored in a very different way. She, with 50 other mothers, was the focus of a Mathru puja–a prayer for mothers–at the Chinmaya Mission Tri-State Center, a Hindu temple in Langhorne. During the religious ceremony presided over by Swami Siddhananda, the children knelt in front of their mothers. They symbolically washed their mothers’ feet with a sprinkle of water, gave them each a gold coin and fruit, and anointed their foreheads with a vermilion paste. The children bowed their heads to the floor in reverence and were in turn blessed by their mothers. The ceremony was “a chance to show your mom how much you appreciate her, but in a more traditional way,” said Savita Patel’s daughter Amika. “It’s not just gift-giving.” Her mother agreed. The other Mother’s day treats were welcome, she said, “but this is something extra-special to me.” Members of the Langhorne temple said there was no exact equivalent to Mother’s Day in India. Yesterday’s ceremony was adapted by Swami Chinmayananda, the founder of Chinmaya Mission.
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\n“Mother is next to the God” in importance, said Ramesh Choksi, one of the board members of the mission. In Hindu prayer ceremonies, “usually, we invoke the Gods to the seat of honor and offer our respect,” said Nagaraj, a temple member. “In this case, we invoke the mother to the seat of honor and offer her our respect.” The words in the Sanskrit chant that that the children sang to their mothers bore out that sentiment” “By mother’s blessings alone men become worshipful in this world and happy in the other world,” it said in part. “He who sees God in his own mother, he alone sees Him everywhere as well.” Hari Pillai, a Drexel University student, said that it was important to him, and especially to his mother, to add the religious element to Mother’s Day. “You can say, ‘Mom have a good day,’ but you can also pray for her, too,” he said. “You need to connect with her more spiritually…it’s adding Hinduism to make it more special.”
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