Hyderabad, August 01: There is a new offering to propitiate the Goddess of Wealth this festive season, golden coloured five and 10 rupee coins.
The coins, released by the Reserve Bank of India a few months ago, are a big hit and in great demand before and during the Varalakshmi Vratham pooja by devotees who wanted to offer something new and novel to their favourite deity. That is if they can find these coins.
The coins have been snapped up by those lucky enough to lay their hands on them. In fact, people are hoarding them since they are new and look very snazzy.
The new coins look just like the old ones, except that they have a centimetre long gold-coloured band around the rim. Many devotees that Expresso talked to on Friday had not even heard of the new coins and the ones who had were desperately trying to get some for the pooja.
Y Rami Reddy, proprietor of Rami Reddy Pure Ghee Sweets near Secunderabad is one of the lucky few who had some Rs 10 coins. He had got three bagfuls of the new coins some months ago from the bank. Each bag contained Rs 20,000 worth of the coins and his customers kept asking for the coins.
“I have distributed Rs 60,000 worth of these coins in the last four months, but people who come to my shop are still asking for them,” he said. He had one Rs 10 coin left that he used today for a simple pooja at home.
Another devotee, G K Shastry has heard of the coins, but didn’t have any in possession. “We conducted the pooja without them.
We use 108 coins in our Varalakshmi pooja and would have definitely used the new coins if we had them,” he said.
There were throngs of devotees at the famous Ashthalakshmi temple in Dilsukhnagar.
They were milling around the nearby stores buying flowers, coconuts and other pooja materials.
Kaniammal, a store owner from Tamil Nadu said, “I have seen the new coins a couple of times, but currently don’t have any.” She added, “Devotees who come to my store sometimes ask me if I have these coins because they want to offer these t o the Goddess of Wealth.” Other devotees milling around the temple had not heard of the new coins.
The scarcity of the coins has fuelled the demand for them.
People are not willing to spend the coins and instead take them out of circulation. Rami Reddy said, “I have exhausted all the coins I had. In fact I was left with just one coin for today’s pooja”.
Looks like devotees are hoping to be repaid many times over for their unique offerings to the Goddess of Wealth.
–Agencies–