Sankar KS Kapali Festival Crowd Management

IT Professional turns to Temple Crowd Management Service

51 year old IT professional KS Sankar was at Singaravellar’s Soora Samharam event on North Mada Street on Saturday (Nov 18) evening. Several hundreds of devotees gathered near the temple office to watch the enactment of Kapali Temple’s Singaravellar killing the asura. He anchored the team of crowd management personnel helping the Mylapore Police and the temple authorities at the event keeping the highly devotional and excitable crowd in order. Ropes had been placed on each side of the road to ensure that the devotees don't invade into the path of the asura who made his away on a procession from the East end of the North Mada Street six times in different forms around Singaravellar signifying Lord Muruga's role in Aru Padai Veedu. On Thursday, the Station Vigilance Committee (SVC) team was in Thiruvallikeni for the street procession to mark Manavala Mamuni's Avathara Utsavam (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2019/11/manavala-mamuni-utsavam-thiruvallikeni.html). The team also is involved in managing the crowd on the Vaikunta Ekadasi day at Thiruvallikeni.

The entire team is active on Saturday evening with Aavin providing several sachets of rose milk for their service while team member Sivakumar runs around to bring in bottles of water for his team. The crowd is not always cooperative as Sivakumar found out with an old man who refused to move away from the processional path and he had to be stern to take him away. But that is what the team's experience has come in handy in recent times with their understanding of the utsavam processes and the peaking of the crowds at important points.

One of the big occasions in the year is the Panguni Utsavam when crowds throng the Kapaleeswarar temple especially on Arubathumoovar and Ther (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2023/04/kapali-panguni-utsavam-2023.html). The Mylapore Police work in close coordination with the SVC members to manage the crowd through the festival. The team has also helped spotting offenders at these big events and brought them in front of the police. On the occasion of Anna Abhisekam, Sankar found huge jewellery at the Kapali temple well past 10pm and handed it to the Mylapore Police. The devotee was delighted with his service. On a Pradosham evening, he anchored securing back two lost children for the mother who was seen in tears at the corner of the Kapali temple. And when the mother fell full stretch at the feet of Sankar, it left him stunned but also gave him a feel of the big role that the team plays during high crowd events at temples.

A 'Greenery' and Service Orientation at at young age

Right from a young age, Sankar had been initiated into a service mind set by his appa, a batchmate of TN Seshan, who served as a superintendent in the forest department. His appa had played a role in the arrest of Veerappan in the early 1980s.  Sankar saw his appa perform his duty with sincerity and that rubbed off on him. The concept of greenery too had been instilled in him very early on in his life.

He had been visiting the Kapaleeswarar temple as a devotee for several years and joined last decade the State Vigilance Committee team that had been performing service since the 1950s. Its role had diminished over a period of time and the team members had come down to a low number. He found that a formal systematic process had not been developed and he took it upon himself the task of setting up a system that could be used by the next gen.

It is just a few hours prior to the big Thiru Kalyanam event at the Murugan temple in Vadapalani and EO Hariharan, who has taken charge only a few months ago, is keen for Sankar to be present along with his team to manage the crowd on Sunday evening. Just ahead of the event, Sankar told this writer as to how he has become fully involved in temple service in the last few years “The health issues relating to my amma and a wrong diagnosis led me to quit my IT job that I had involved with for two decades. While I donned the role of a consultant, I found that I could spend my free time in performing service to Kapaleeswarar and that is how I became actively involved in crowd management.”

A strong process at SVC

Sankar went about understanding in-depth the whole process of this crowd management process and what it entailed. He recounts his first meeting at the Commissioner’s office “When I met a senior person there who was on the verge of retirement, he asked if the SVC still existed. Over time, the SVC had slowed down and its members had branched out starting their own ones in different locations in the city but the police were happy that the SVC was being making a comeback of sorts. I was determined to make the team stronger with the help of the senior members in the team who had been involved for many years.”

In 2019, he organised a meeting between around 25 SVC members and the Police team at Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan to discuss the revival of the SVC and to set up formal process of engagement between the temple, the police and the SVC. New rules and conditions were laid out for the SVC members including 15 hours of service every month. A formal badge was presented to the members after a minimum of six months of sincere service. 

This is pure service not a power grabbing opportunity

He says that this team is there to perform a voluntary service and that the members cannot use this as a power weapon. But there are the odd ones out there too looking just for popularity and to leverage the power that this service entails as this writer found out in multiple interactions with the SVC members in the last three years. But they are only a small fraction of this strong team that now tops 50members. Sankar is hoping that more sincere voluntary service inclined members will join. The team is also performing night patrol services in the city on Friday and Saturday and has also been managing traffic on the weekends at Marina and Besant Nagar beaches. He is particular delighted with the fact the senior police officials who served in Mylapore have called on him after they have been transferred to other parts of the city  to check if the team could help out the police in those areas. "This is a big endorsement from the police that our team has gained credibility" says Sankar.

Sankar has been maintaining records including photographs and attendance of members at every event where the team has performed its service. This he says also gives an indication of the commitment of the team members. Annual presentation is made to the Police Chief on the service rendered by the team in the year gone by. The shelf at his home is adorned with several certificates and medals presented to him by the city police for his voluntary service.

While Sankar continues to play the role of a trainer in the corporate world, he is often seen at temple festivals managing the crowd. 

Corporate plans may soon take him away back into the business world but Sankar has documented and recorded the entire process and formalized the system in a way that he believes will make it easy for the next in charge to take over. For the moment he rushes off to Vadapalani Temple for the big Sashti culmination event on this Sunday evening.