Malibu Hindu Temple Temporarily Closed until March 31, 2020

Namaskaram,

In continuation of my previous emails, I would like to inform you that the Temple has been monitoring the situation in real time. The whole world, the United States, and Los Angeles is going through an extraordinary crisis related to the coronavirus. As you may all know, the U.S. government has declared a state of emergency and so has the governor of California. The mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, has encouraged all religious institutions to close their services in the larger interest of serving the best interest of the community in which we live.

I have discussed with the employees of the Temple and we have all grudgingly concluded that we have no option but to close the Temple temporarily at least until the end of March 2020. This will go into effect as of Tuesday, March 17, 2020. During this period, the Temple gates will be closed and only the employees of the Temple will have access to the Temple premises. The priests have informed me that they will follow all of the religious rituals that must go on as a part of our service to god. We request you to check our website for any updated information. I have been informed that the e-mails that we are sending have not been received with any degree of consistency. The technology team that is servicing the e-mail delivery and the website has informed me that less than 5% of the people are even checking the e-mail updates sent by the Temple.

Further, the team also has informed me that for reasons not connected to the origin of the e-mails, many e-mails have gone into the junk folder of many of the devotees. To the best of their knowledge, this may have something to do with your own devices. Regardless, I encourage you to check the website and encourage all other devotees to check the website at: www.malibuhindutemple.org for updated information.

We urge all of you to cooperate with us in whatever capacity you may be asked upon to serve the best interests of the Temple. We have no idea just as the rest of the world the length of time that these conditions will continue and therefore unable to request any specific help from the devotees. As the circumstances change, we may ask for your assistance as the situation demands to help the Temple during this difficult time. I also want to thank all the employees and devotees who enabled the Temple to stay open until today albeit without group related events.

I pray on behalf of all of you that the Temple services resume as soon as possible and enable us to celebrate the Temple programs that we are known for throughout the world including the abhishekam and aarti services on Saturdays.

We wish to felicitate all our Telugu devotees on the occasion of the Ugadi celebrations which were scheduled for March 28, 2020 and now stand cancelled. 

Sincerely,

Nadadur S. Kumar
General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer
Hindu Temple Society of Southern California