For N. Anantha Padmanabhan of NAC Jewellers, feeding pilgrims at the Arubathumoovar festival is an act of devotion

NAC Jewellers’ store is situated right across the Kapaleeshwarar Temple, where the festival takes place, and the Chairman himself leads a team to cook and serve food to pilgrims

The first store set up by NAC Jewellers at Mylapore in Chennai is all abuzz at this time of the year, not just with customers, but also because pilgrims flock to the Arubathumoovar festival at the Kapaleeshwarar Temple, situated just opposite the store. N. Anantha Padmanabhan, Chairman and Managing Director of NAC Jewellers, along with his team, volunteers to serve the community during the festival by cooking for the pilgrims. For Padmanabhan, being a part of Arubathumoovar – the festival of 63 saints or Nayanmars – has been a practice for the past 20 years and he is looking forward to continue the legacy in the years to come.

“This festival is very important in Mylapore and it’s been happening for hundreds of years. We volunteer and distribute prasad to pilgrims who come to the festival. We cook the food all day and night and distribute it to them for four hours outside our store, as a goodwill gesture and an initiative for the community, as our store is right across the Kapaleeshwarar Temple, where the festival takes place. It is our community that we serve, as our store here is the first store that we had started,” says Padmanabhan, adding that around 15,000-20,000 people come for the festival, and out of them, they would have fed around 4,000-5,000 people so far just outside the store.

After distributing the prasad, when the cooked food is over, NAC provides pilgrims with buttermilk as the temperature rises during the day. The entire initiative is solely for the satisfaction of the management and team of NAC Jewellers, and there is no business motive behind it. “It is not something we do to increase our customer base. It is done only for our satisfaction. Then it is left to the consumers to judge what NAC is like,” observes Padmanabhan.

NAC Jewellers also serves the community through its Anandham Foundation on a monthly basis. The foundation helps out several orphanages in paying school and college fees for their children, and sends provisions for their daily meals. It also contributes towards breakfast for patients at several cancer hospitals. Other than that, it sponsors provisions at old age homes for daily meals of people residing there. The foundation also partially pays for poverty-stricken kids’ heart surgeries and other needs.

Written by Janhavi Ganguly

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