Dear Devotees,
Greetings and best wishes to you and your family members for a Very Happy New Year 2018. Let us collectively pray to our Kuladeivam at Suraikayur to keep our families in good health and with all blessings.
The purpose of this communication is to keep you informed of the financials of our temple. Over a period of time, a small corpus has been created which is fetching a monthly interest of just about Rs 8,000/-. As against this, the average monthly expenditure is about Rs 30,000/-. This gap is at present being met by a handful of devotees.
It is felt that there is an urgent need to increase the corpus as much as possible so that this gap can be met through increased monthly interest inflows. As such, due to economic conditions in the financial market, the interest rates have diminished significantly. Hence there is a need for a bigger corpus. This has rather become an urgent necessity now to sustain the upkeep and maintenance of the temple in a way that there is no deterioration in the quality of experience that the devotees get while they visit for darshan.
To have a better understanding of the kind of expenses that get incurred every month, the following list of heads is provided below:
- Salary to Kurukkal Rs 15,000
- Salary to Watchman 3,000
- Salary to Utilities (electrician, etc) 1,000
- Monthly provision 1,700
- Electricity 2,000
- Maintenance (cleaning, garden, etc) 3,000
- Expenses at Mahabhishegam 5,000 (converted to per month)
- Total 30,700
- Or about Rs 30,000 p.m.
None of the above can be reduced any further and are as such at the barest minimum level.
There are around 200 families attached to the temple. Thanks to the blessings of the Mahasastha Ayyanar and the blessings of our elders, all of us are financially doing much better than our earlier generations. It would only be in the fitness of things that we repay our debt to the Lord in a way that when the time comes for the next generation to take over the maintenance of the temple, we can hand it over to them in a better state than what it was when we inherited it from our ancestors.
With this background, a suggestion is placed before all the devotees for their careful and most favourable consideration. The idea is to build a corpus of at least Rs 20 lacs per annum for the next 2 to 3 years, or about Rs 60 lacs. This will fetch a higher interest return, thereby bridge the present gap in income vs expenses. To achieve this target, every family may consider contributing at least Rs 10,000 per annum.
For most of the families, Rs 10,000 per annum may not be a big sum. Devotees will appreciate that this, on an average, works to a mere Rs 833 per month and is much less than what it costs to dine in a restaurant with family these days or to go to a cinema to watch a movie. Several families have their children living overseas and are better placed to pitch in higher. In US dollar terms, Rs 10,000 translates to a little over $ 150.
While contributions, both big and small are welcome, devotees may please contribute as much as possible to help in tiding over the situation with ease.
Since the year 2018 has just begun, this may be the best time of the year to make an annual commitment for the next three years, if not longer.
In case devotees have any other suggestion in mind to enhance the temple's corpus, they are most welcome to suggest. But please also provide a workable plan for the same.
Contributions to the corpus may be made to the following account:
Bank Name : State Bank of India
A/c Title : Suraikayur Charitable Trust
Account No. : 30436986822
Branch : Kilpauk
IFSC Code : SBIN0001853
It may be noted that contributions to the above account are eligible for deduction under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961.
Before concluding this post, there is one other aspect. Devotees will recall that the last Kumbhabishekam of the temple was performed in a grand manner on 4th Sept 2008. Come September this year, it will be the 10th anniversary of the event. In two more years, the next Kumbhabishekam will become due as they are generally done in a cycle of 12 years. Certainly by then, the Lord at Suraikayur will bless us all even more to renew our devotion and commitment to Him to enable us to pay back in bigger ways possible.
Warm regards.
