Trio creates app to help customise rituals with the guidance of priests

Aswin S, one of the co-founders tells DT Next, “We started Parampara to make some basic rituals customised for each individual who has the challenge to access their gurus. We consulted several gurus to make this platform possible. How it works is — people can select the festival or ritual they wish to perform, fill a form with information about what they needed for the pooja, once you submit it a video based on your specific details is prepared and you can play the video and perform your ritual with guided instructions. There are certain aspects while chanting the mantras and the procedures vary based on many factors such as time, location, community, marital status and we account for all these. We launched the app for avani avittam when a lot of sacred thread changing ceremonies happen. We had around 250 downloads during that festival. The slokas and rituals are performed and verified by highly qualified and experienced vadhyar (purohit).” 

The team is now planning for Krishna Janmashtami or Gokulashtami and Ganesh Chaturthi. He says that there are minor differences in all rituals based on the religious sect or clan. “In each state, the rituals differ. What we have customised is the most common Tamil way of doing it. We wanted purohits to join our platform so that we can record their versions and share it. So that we will be having more versions of the same ritual and people from other states can download it. The current generation is not so tuned with the traditional aspects so we have simplified all the rituals. If you just configure the sect and subsect, you will get details on which is the apt version of the mantra and you can play it. We are not focussing only on a particular community within Hinduism,” he adds.