2024 is almost upon us, and every place is gearing up to celebrate the dawn of a new year in their own unique ways. For the Sri Yoganarasimha Swamy temple in Vijayanagar, Mysuru, this means another round of their yearly tradition of distributing laddoos to their devotees on the 1st of January.
Inspired by the famous Tirupati Laddoo, they began the tradition in 1994 and at that time handed out around 1000 laddoos, and over time the popularity grew and gradually grew to one lakh and now to two lakh laddoos being distributed yearly. The process is a massive undertaking and one that the temple has faithfully been delivering on year after year
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To get this monumental order completed on time, a team of 60 cooks started preparing laddoos on the 20th of December to finish their task by the 31st. The distribution of laddoos begins at 4 am on the first and continues until midnight. There will be 15,000 laddoos each of 2 kgs and 2 lakh weighing 150 grams each
Naturally this quantity of laddoo production requires a massive list of ingredients and it’s reported that to make these it takes One hundred quintals of besan flour, two hundred quintals of sugar, ten thousand litres of edible oil, five hundred kilograms of cashew, five hundred kilograms of raisins, five hundred kilograms of almonds, one thousand kilograms of diamond sugar, two thousand kilograms of bura sugar, fifty kilograms of pista, fifty kilograms of jaikayi (nutmeg), fifty kilograms of pachche karpura (edible camphor), and other items are included.
Another special element of the New Year rituals includes special Tomale and Swarna Pushpa flowers brought from Srirangam, Madurai to perform Sahasranama Puja to Yoganarasimha Swamy. The event brings hundreds of thousands of devotees to the temple every year and 2024 is set to be another landmark celebration.