Trip 2 Tirupati

Trip To Tirupati

It is very well said according to hindu mythology that god decides the visit of a believer to his temple ,that is to say that if God does not want you to pay a visit to his temple you won’t be able to do that.Rationally thinking this sounds like overdose of orthodoxy but we believe what we see or experience and not to question this is how traditional beliefs and theories grow up.

Talking of theories and religious beliefs in india,we come across several incidents and phenomena which are not completely explainable by science and seem to be beyond intellectual boundaries of human race,most common of them would be like some random stone idol of some random Hindu God drinking milk or water or even alcohol sometime and if that occurs believers from all across the country splurge on to the site for feeding the God expecting him to confirm their berth in heaven ,I am not sure whether our God is interested in their bribes but one thing is certain that he would be so proud to have such a huge count of disciples.

Coming to the point now, we say that we can go to God’s holy place only when he calls us ,this is most commonly and frequently said about Vaishno Devi temple and of course Tirupati temple ,I frankly speaking ,never believed It ,I mean, anyone would say the same ,we go wherever we want whenever we have free time and we are financially and physically sound ,same idea I had until I experienced that it is not the case with all the ‘wherevers’ .After placements we planned a trip to Tirupati temple 150 kms from Chennai,

When the notion first struck my mind I had almost two dozen guys having congruent idea,as many as good,we planned to go together,our results were declared on 6^th of January,the idea was to go on 9^th sweet and simple we were supposed to hire prepaid or fast track taxis four guys in each made it five taxis to be hired some of them having their own car were ready to carry others with them everything was set we were good to go suddenly some of them developed this queer love for their friends and roommates who were not yet placed and the sentiment spread like some infection in some creepy Hollywood movie where the whole world gets destroyed and normal human beings like us face extinction due to some punk ass virus anyway ,coming back to the god’s will many of us backed off then and that was kind of understandable reason and thus we waited for our friends’ fortune to strike and that happened pretty soon by the end of second week of January most of us were placed and thus there was no stopping us.And once again the planning desk was busy and all the thinkers gathered together to discuss and finalize the game plan, some guys were making plans others were busy in rejecting them and questioning their practicality all sort of leaders were there it looked like the pirates of Caribbean were fighting over their plan to hunt some chest buried in the heart of ocean they didn’t seem to realize here that we were supposed to go 3200ft above sea level, no wonder all captain jack sparrows ended with no solid plan at all and it was postponed for next day ,when we woke up next day ,what we come to hear during breakfast that some of us are planning to go to Pondicherry instead ,what I felt at that time is not explainable using descent parliamentary vocabulary but I hope you understand ,I mean come on guys we were supposed to go to a holy place ,how can u bargain it for cheap booze and hot wet beach beauty, may god forgive me but that sounded awful.

Its very strange that when guys decide to go for something like this there will be nothing to stop them ,they will arrange money ,they will arrange vehicle ,they will arrange fun partners too and all of that in an exceptionally small time but when it comes to Tirupati all hell breaks loose on them ,they will run short of money ,they won’t be able to book ticket ,they will fall ill ,some of them would even run short of clothes ,anyway that pondi plan jeopardized our trip back then. Some of us who were serious about tirupati have started to realize that if we want to go we would have to abandon our friendship weights for the while and thus seven of us decided to go again the plan was made everything was smooth n simple, we had to leave after 2 days from the day of planning, just before the day of departure we came to know that 3 of the 7 had already left with their friends having cars, not to wonder they wanted the luxury of the car and wanted to save the fare money, now 4 of us remaining, we were in our rooms but we were in contact we were supposed to leave in the morning the next day, we were all set, suddenly one of our friends came in and expressed his deep desire to go with us, we said fine and explained him the plan he said ok and left, he called us back at midnight to inform that he would not be able to go with us because he has to help his friend in company interview the next day and he convinced one of our group members to stay so that they can go together some other time and the bad luck bit us again, the other 2 also backed off, I was having this feeling that if I want to go I’ll have to go alone but since I have never been there I had no idea about the place so I wanted someone to go with me and thus I too killed my plan for the time being.

In the meantime many plans were made and trashed; I was growing desperate and pessimistic about my desire to go there but now hopefully the time had come and God wanted to see me or he wanted me to see him or whatever, four guys from my class called me up and asked if I am interested for the much awaited Tirupati trip and for the millionth time I said yes to a proposal ,if I had been a girl and would have said yes to these many proposals am sure I would have been labeled as slut in the community but thank God I was saying yes to God and not to some meatsuit . We left hostel at 6 PM, caught a bus to tambaram because we had to catch a bus to cmbt from there, when we landed in tambaram one of our dear friend had caught a notion that we should have some emergency medicines as we were going to a high altitude place and that too on a bus we could suffer from vomiting or giddiness or something like that, I knew that was not going to happen to me but being a part of the society it was my moral duty to nod my head in affirmation and concern for my friend’s health and so he left saying that he’ll be back in 10 mins we had our tea in the meantime and god that was fantastic ,10 mins passed pretty soon and so did 20,the vomiting phobic prick went missing for half an hour I can’t explain the wrath everyone was feeling about him we were fancying about what bad things would have happened to him and kept laughing to keep our spirits up amidst our anger but that was temporary not to question we all are reincarnation of Gandhiji who believe in truth and non violence!!!

Finally our ailing friend returned with the stack of medicines and we reached cmbt bus terminal, we got onboard on an AC bus and slept for next 4 hours and when we woke up we were in Tirumala, here we were supposed to buy tickets for visiting our deity and god you are expensive! I mean we watch movies for 2hours in 100 bucks and here we were paying 50 bucks just for a glimpse of you, I wonder how so many people in a developing country like us afford such lavish gods. We slept for the night in a dharmashala and cruised again on our bus towards our ultimate destination and buoy what a journey it was from tirumala to tirupati from the curves of the mountains and greenery of jungles , hills covered with clouds, birds chirping, falls rattling it was awesome! In 2 hours we were on the top of the world and ya it felt like that!

We kept our stuff in a locker up the hill got rid of our footwear as explained by one of our crew members that there will be no accommodation for footwear near the temple but guess what he was wrong as always, there were million places near the temple for footwear capitulation, we were made to suffer for atleast 1 km without footwear I am sure everyone was cursing that smart ass at that moment but finally we entered the temple premises and a little relief for everyone, we stood in queue for almost 1 hour before we came to encounter the horrid crowd which won’t mind overrunning anyone’s body in their quest to get to their beloved god’s golden idol, the crowd behaved as if some juice was distributed inside which was supposed to make you immortal and that too was distributed with a warning board “Hurry, stocks limited”, anyway we were all fighters there we reached the final frontier, it was a giant gate made of silver, as we entered through it what we witnessed was phenomenal, it looked like a city of gold, if not more there was several metric tonnes of gold in there in that 10 x 10 meters premise, it was quiet vigilant that many ladies had forgot all the pain they took in coming there after seeing the gold, well I am not sure whether they were hypnotized by the gold or by the deity but this am sure that they were hypnotized, I got my chance to look at the idol of God Srinivasa and it was genuinely mesmerizing I could not take my eyes off it until somebody pushed me out of the temple. I got out first and we waited there for the rest of us. After getting done with our primary objective we moved around in the temple looking at other auxiliary gods and their temples and then I realized why people were getting so crazy in the queue, if an atheist like me could get mesmerized it would have been like nirvana for people who are true believers!!!