It simply depends on the faith of its thousands of Hindu devotees who run a unique voluntary courier service to faithfully deliver the fruit every day without fail. This is how the thousands of coconuts, which can total more than 1,00,000 on festival days?reach the famous Maa Tarini temple in the eastern Indian state of Orissa every day. This free courier service relies on a network of collection boxes on roads and other temples, passenger buses and devotees simply carrying the fruit to the temple. Hold a coconut in your hand on a highway in Orissa and the next bus will surely stop to pick it up to take it to the temple in Ghatgaon in Keonjhar district. The drivers? faith in the goddess Maa Tarini is complete?it is common to find the space behind their seats stacked with coconuts. Even if the bus is on a different route, the driver will make sure to drop the coconuts in a collection box en route or pass them on to a bus headed for Ghatgaon. The drivers believe that carrying the coconuts to the deity ensures a safe journey. Temple officials say coconuts land up from neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar through this amazing network. This has spawned a local coconut-based sweets and oil industry. The coconut courier has also helped to make Maa Tarini an extremely popular deity in Orissa. By one estimate, there are over 1,000 Maa Tarini temples in Orissa today, which also serve as collection points for the fruit headed for the main temple. The popularity of the deity is also evinced in the fact that three local music companies have sold more than 1,00,000 copies of tapes containing Maa Tarini devotional songs.
(Based on a report in BBC News on February 3, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4677320.stm)
