Tamil Nadu
The future is finally here, at least in a temple in Padappai located on the outskirts of Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai. This temple has replaced the traditional tamarind rice and sweet pongal prasadam with burgers, brownies, sandwiches, and cherry tomato salads.
Interestingly, the new age prasadam are Food Safety and Standards Authority of India certified, comes with manufacturing, expiry and also best before date on each serving.
The temple also offers birthday special cakes by maintaining a computerised register with birth dates and residence address of the devotees. On the day of their birthday the ‘birtday cake prasadam’ is delivered to their doorsteps. The elderly devotees are fond of this service
Apart from the prasadam, the service to distribute the same is also new age. The temple has vending machines in which the visitor slips in a token and it disperses box of ‘pret-a-prasadam’ made in the automated kitchen of the temple, reported a leading daily.
The man behind setting up this kitchen is K Sri Sridhar who said that the idea is to prove that nutritious food cooked in a clean kitchen with clean mind is good for serving to God, the Times of India quoted him as saying. As long as devotees are not objecting, this seems like a good idea.