Thiruverkadu Devi Karumariamman Temple

Thiruverkadu lies 18 km west of Chennai. It was once a forest of vel (white acacia) trees, Velangadu, and the honorific "Thiru" turned it into Thiruverkadu. A five-tiered rajagopuram faces east, with the sacred tank, the Thiruneetru Poigai, across from it, and a Vinayagar under a peepal tree greets you at the entrance. In the sanctum Karumariamman sits facing east with every attribute of Parasakthi, under a gold-covered vimana, and in the prakaram the festival image of the goddess rocks on a swing.

The temple legend goes like this. Warned by a voice from the sky that his sister Devaki's eighth child would kill him, Kamsa locked Devaki and Vasudeva in prison and killed seven of their babies. When Vishnu was born as Krishna, the eighth, Parvati was born at the same moment as Maya to Yashoda in Ayarpadi, and with divine help Vasudeva swapped the two infants. Told that a girl had been born, Kamsa still meant to kill her and put his hands to her throat, but the child leapt into the sky, warned him that his killer was growing up among the herders of Ayarpadi, and vanished. Baffled, Kamsa blurted out a single word, "Karumari": she who changed places in the womb. She then took a terrible dark-blue form to subdue the demons, planting her trident before her. To calm her, Vishnu asked her to hide her body and show only her head, since her compassionate gaze alone would protect the world. She did so, and took a gentle, beautiful form for her devotees as well. On a Sunday in Thai when the full moon fell on Poosam star, she appeared to the sage Agastya, who had sung her praises; that day is kept as her incarnation day. She told him that in the Kali Yuga she would live as a snake in an anthill in the Velangadu forest, where she would have a temple and a tank. Long afterwards, in our own age, the people of the village took to worshipping an anthill beneath a neem tree. She came to a devotee in a dream and asked for a temple, and when they began to clear the anthill they found her inside, self-manifested. Never born of any womb, she is also praised as "Karuvil Illatha Karumari".

The anthill still stands in the north-east corner of the temple, topped by a trident smeared with turmeric and kumkum. A separate shrine holds a wooden image of the goddess, known as Marachilai Amman. Because she guards home and family, devotees pray to her and drop a padlock into the hundi beside her, an unusual custom. Bala Prathyangira, a girl goddess standing with a lion, has her own shrine, and on new-moon days a fire ritual with dried red chillies is held for her. The two prakarams hold more than twenty shrines: Valampuri Vinayagar, Srinivasa Perumal, the Navagraha, Verkanni Amman, Murugan with Valli and Deivanai, Arumugar, Dakshinamurthy, Angala Parameswari, the Saptha Kannigal, Durga, Bhairava, Uchishta Ganapathi, Gayatri, Mahalakshmi and Rajarajeswari among them. Twice a year you can watch the sun's rays fall on the goddess's head. Six pujas are held daily, and Sunday is Karumari's own day.

The temple tree is the karuvelam (babul), and the sacred tank is the Thiruneetru Poigai.

Thiruverkadu is an old town. Excavations here turned up locally made jars shaped like Roman amphorae, evidence that it was a busy trading town in the Sangam age. It is one of the Thevaram-sung sites of Thondai Nadu and the birthplace of Murkha Nayanar, one of the sixty-three Nayanmars. That Thevaram shrine is the town's Balambikai-Vedapureeswarar temple, a gajaprishta (elephant-backed) temple, which holds the town's inscriptions and an old Somaskanda image in its sanctum. One of its pillars carries a carving of Karumariamman seated on a lotus, holding a drum and trident in her upper hands and a sword and skull-bowl in the lower, and she appears there too as Sirasu Amman with a crown of flames. The Karumariamman temple's own sanctum, halls and prakaram are modern. In August 2023 the HR&CE Department announced two projects worth about ₹80 crore as part of the coming kumbabhishekam: three new gopurams with entrances (one of five tiers, two of three), granite in place of the brick-and-mortar mandapams, granite for the sanctum, the 22 prakaram shrines and the platform around the anthill, a larger annadhanam hall, and forty cottages for devotees who stay overnight.

Many come to pray for a delayed marriage. To keep their home and family safe, devotees pray to Marachilai Amman and drop a padlock in her hundi. Families also cook pongal in the temple grounds, offer hair and have children's ears pierced here, and some stay the night at the temple as part of a vow. These are matters of faith, and no result is promised.