Long queues continued at the Sabarimala shrine on October 19 as devotees waited to buy aravana payasam and appam, despite the Travancore Devaswom Board saying that adequate stocks of the popular prasadam were available.
Television visuals showed nearly a third of the counters distributing aravana payasam closed, leaving long lines at the counters that remained operational. One pilgrim told the media that he had been waiting for two hours to buy a tin of aravana and appam.
“Buying aravana is taking longer than the wait for the darshan of Lord Ayyappa,” the devotee said.
The continuing queues came a day after TDB president K Jayakumar said that the shrine had an opening stock of two lakh tins of aravana and that around 1.5 lakh tins were being produced each day. He had also said that there would be no shortage of aravana during the upcoming pilgrimage season, which begins on November 17.
Aravana is a thick, sweet preparation made with red rice, jaggery, ghee, cardamom powder and ginger powder. Appam, another principal offering at the shrine, is a sweet rice cake or fritter prepared with ingredients including rice and jaggery. Both are widely sought by devotees as prasadam after visiting the temple.
Jayakumar had said that five vending machines were available at Sabarimala. The machines allow devotees to deposit money and collect aravana tins without joining the regular queues. The availability of these machines was presented as an additional arrangement to reduce waiting time for pilgrims.
However, the visuals of closed counters and the reported two-hour wait indicated that access to the prasadam remained uneven during the current opening. The issue is linked not only to production capacity but also to how many counters are operating and how efficiently devotees are being directed to available collection points.
The shrine is currently open from October 18 to 22 for the Thula masam puja. The short opening has brought pilgrims to Sabarimala ahead of the main pilgrimage season, during which the TDB will have to manage demand for darshan and prasadam alongside the movement of large numbers of visitors through the shrine complex.
The TDB has not indicated in the supplied report why nearly a third of the aravana counters were closed or when all counters would resume operations. Its stated next step is to maintain production and availability ahead of the pilgrimage season beginning November 17.
