Puri Temple Cooks on Warpath, Devotees Suffer
Dec 26, JAGANNATHA PURI, ORISSA — The Jagannath Temple was plunged into unprecedented chaos on Saturday following a protest by shrine cooks (suar) that left daily rituals of the sibling Deities completely haywire, and left pilgrims in utter lurch.

The shrine suars were angry after bearing heavy financial loss due to non-sale of the Mahaprasad they had prepared on Friday afternoon. Huge quantities of holy food worth nearly Rs 3 lakh could not be sold among devotees and ultimately became waste due to the inordinate delay in completion of daily rituals of the Deities on Friday afternoon.

Holding the Jagannath Temple administration responsible for the ‘mismanagement' and demanding compensation towards the loss, the cooks staged a demonstration inside the Jagannath Temple office, located in front of the Royal Palace, a stone's throw from the 12th century shrine.

On Saturday morning, more than eighty cooks marched towards the shrine office with the unsold Mahaprasad in kuduas (earthen containers) over their heads. The temple office virtually turned into Ananda Bazar (a market inside Jagannath temple where Mahaprasad is sold) as hundreds of bhog-packed kuduas were kept by cooks as a mark of protest.

"We demand compensation for the loss we faced. We incurred loss of nearly Rs 3 lakh. We will not cook Mahaprasad until we get the compensation," Padmanabh Mahasuar, secretary of the Suar Mahasuar Nijog, the body of shrine cooks.

"We had prepared Mahaprasad by lunchtime in the afternoon on Friday. But we failed to sell those stuff following delay in completion of rituals by priests in afternoon. Thousands of devotees waited for hours together and returned without getting Mahaprasad," Mahasuar said. "The irregularity in rituals has been taking place almost everyday. The officials have failed to maintain coherency in rituals," he added.

"We are trying to sort out the problem. I will discuss the matter with shrine officials regarding giving compensation to cooks. We will also try to streamline daily rituals in temple from Sunday," Puri district collector, Fakir Charan Satapathy said after holding talk with the incensed cooks.

The miffed cooks had even reportedly closed the main entrance of the shrine for a few minutes on Friday morning, leading to inconvenience of the pilgrims.

The temple, which sees a raft of complex rituals being solemnized every day, plunged into crisis due to the cooks' resentment on Saturday. The cooks had not prepared Mahaprasad for common public till late afternoon.

Nearly twenty-five thousand devotees relish Mahaprasad on any given day. On festive occasions, Mahaprasad is prepared for nearly one lakh devotees every day. Sources said the mahaprasad is served four times a day in the temple. Not less than fifteen types of cooked vegetarian foods are prepared daily for the Lord.

Around four hundred cooks prepare the sumptuous food every day inside the temple kitchen, which is considered as the world's biggest temple kitchen. The kitchen has the capacity to cook food for at least three lakh people every day, sources said.