My family and I have been blessed to host Siddha pujas at our home since 2002. If we had carried out our home puja, initially keeping it to ourselves, with Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal's arrival on our shores and when he accepted our invitation to grace our house in 2005, we invited family and friends over. With Agathiyar's arrival in the form of the bronze statue in 2010, many came over knowing he was there. After meeting Mrs. Molly Menon from the USA in 2011, who later became known as Jnana Jothiamma, she requested that we stream these pujas so that she could watch them from the comfort of her home in Minnesota. When another devotee from the USA asked to watch too, I had two laptops streaming the puja. Understanding the inconvenience of having this hardware in the way of the rituals, I looked up streaming it on YouTube.
With the arrival of a team of youths after their Nadi reading, beginning in 2013, these pujas continued without fail. We began to engage in doing charity, too. When Tavayogi came again to Malaysia in 2016 to attend my daughter's wedding, we brought Agathiyar's statue over to the homes of devotees who invited Tavayogi over. Then all these puja came to a halt in the wake of the pandemic in 2019. Post-pandemic saw the reemergence of these puja. Now Agathiyar visited the homes of those who invited him. Then he decided not to leave my home. Although he brought a halt to everything, Agathiyar reminded me to carry out the Annual Puja without fail, not by extending an open invitation, but by admitting only those who remembered the day and cared to call. While many forgot the day and let it pass, some waited for something else to turn up and tell us that they could not make it. Others remained silent and kept us guessing, and yet others tend to surprise us later by arriving eventually. But there was that handful who constantly called or came over to look up Agathiyar.
So when I told Agathiyar that I would not carry out his wish for me to keep doing his Annual Puja, which is just around the corner, falling on Thaipusam day on Sunday, 1st February 2026, and awaited his nod, he asked me to do it, reminding me that a family who had been coming over had asked about it. Though being a Sunday, which is the day when many go out to the markets to buy and stock up on meat and vegetables, and which is the day that she tends to earn much more, compared to other days, the lady of the house was willing to let go of her day's earnings at the marketplace to attend this puja. Her devotion towards Agathiyar was so overwhelming that she chose to forego that day's earnings. No wonder Agathiyar directed me to carry out the puja, telling me that she had asked.