VISUAL DELIGHT:

The floral icon of Lord Maha Vishnu installed in front of the main temple complex at Tirumala as part of the annual Brahmotsavam. TIRUMALA: Striking colours, coupled with a rich fragrance, pervaded the holy abode of Lord Venkateswara at Tirumala where the annual Brahmotsavam is in progress. Over 250 reputed floral decorators from Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Coimbatore and Hyderabad, apart from the 400-strong workforce of the Garden department of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), are slogging round-the-clock to tastefully decorate the entire temple complex for the nine-day mega event. A staggering 170 quintals of different varieties of flowers, including chrysanthemum, scented lilies, ixora, anthuriums, orchids, coronations, lillums, cut flowers, tube rose, poinsettia, dahlia and salvia, not to speak of varied foliage plants, have already gone into the job of transforming the hill town into a floral paradise. Staggering count According to garden superintendent J. Gopinath, the daily requirement for carrying out the temple rituals alone during the current festival period is a whopping two and a half metric tonnes of flowers. The floral decorators focussed more on pepping up the inner precincts of the temple with the choicest of flowers. Though the TTD management, this time, has not made any appeal for donation of flowers, the temple is being flooded with several tonnes of flowers everyday, apart from receiving lakhs of rupees as donation for its 'Pushpanjali' scheme. Adding to the grandeur are the exquisitely-designed floral icons of the various incarnations of Lord Maha Vishnu set up in and around the temple. Courtesy: www.thehindu.com