The Phoenix of Trust

Societies are driven by purposes. People are called a society when they have a collective purpose. That purpose can be religious, scientific, cultural, political or something else. Humans tend to identify with the societies as they provide us with a sense of belongingness. But what drives these societies? Is it the larger than life heroes that all societies tend to identify and follow? Or is it the grassroot, who with their phoenix like qualities,  tend to rise again everytime they are battered and defeated? My vote goes to the latter one. And the reason for that is that i have just had a very humbling experience of meeting an amazing phoenix of a person. And that person happens to be my friend's dad.

It started with all my friends deciding to leave the city and visit their respective homes at the same weekend. So me and this friend were the only guys left in the town. And this friend, out of his own sweet and caring self, invited me stay over at his home with his family for a day. Now I have been to his home before too but mostly got talking to his mom as his dad used to leave for work early in the morning and come back late in the night only. But this saturday morning i got a chance to talk to his dad as he was getting ready to leave for work. He was telling me how he started this shoe shop on his own, right from the construction of building when he used to stand there in nasty Chennai heat and get everything done and used to come back at midnights only. And all this when he was nearly 60 years of age when most people take a backseat and play golf or turn to god. The venture was not a purely enterpreneurial one per se,  but the spark in his eyes while telling all this was not dimmed by this fact.

In the evening I was telling my friend about this conversation i had with his dad and this friend started telling me the difficulties his dad had to face because of his trusting nature. This man was comfortably working in Dubai, the family had a good lifestyle and the future of the kids was secure. But as luck would have it, the partner whom his father trusted decided to flee with all the moolah. The family had to wind up everything in Dubai and come back to Chennai. As if the mishaps in Dubai were not enough, his dad's own siblings turned their backs towards him when he needed them the most. How badly his trust must have shattered, thats for his telling, but its not easy for anyone to recover from such a turn of events. So the family had difficult times both on the financial and emotional front. But his dad never lost his trust in the world around. As good things happen to good people and bad things happen only to make good people better, the crisis blew away. And that was because there were some people around who believed in goodness, stood for it and invested in it so that again the phoenix of trust could fly. I was moved to tears when my friend told me that during the crisis his dad stopped raising his voice at both the children for the reason that he thought he had no right to do so when he himself was not doing anything significant in his life. You were wrong sir! You were doing something very significant, something that has helped your children become what they are today. You were teaching them an excellent lesson in self respect. How courageous a man could be to purposely induce a sense of detachment with his own children? And let me tell you that both the kids have done him very proud by becoming successful in their fields.

The point i wanted to arrive at through this incident is that people who trust in this big bad world are mocked upon. We are constantly fed with the information that this world is being run by the whole motley of schemers, who misuse the trusting people for their trust in the world. But I think that trust is the only glue that helps the socities thrive. You travel in trains and buses with the trust that the person sitting next to you is not wearing a bomb. But shouldn't you learn a lesson when your trust has been breached not once but twice? Are you not ending up being a loser by everytime being at the receiving end of it? I beg to differ. I think the trusting people are at a winning position in all respects. They trust and hence push the ball in the world's court leaving it up to the world to decide what it wants to do with it. They trust again and again thinking that might be someday, the world will return their goodness. That one day their trust won't be breached because the world will be too tired to do the same thing again and again. That one day they would have achieved what they set out to achieve.

I request all of the Phonixes of trust out there, never to stop trusting because the socities thrive on you and you all definitely make this world a better place to live in. 

The confluence of faith

As all good things in our country begin with the name of the lord, let my first blog here be no exception. This blog is being written on the day when I am just back from my first visit to Tirupati, the holy abode of Lord Venkateshwara(also known as lord Vishnu)in his Srinivasa avtaar and this experience had been more or less quite unique in its own respect.

Eight of us started at 6: A.M in a Tavera from Chennai on Saturday i.e. 17th Jan, 2008 for Tirumala (Tirupati is the town at foothills and Tirumala, about 25 kms from Tirupati is where the temple is actually located) and we had the passes for the VIP darshan at 11:00 A.M. As Luck would have it, due to heavy rush of Sabrimala Temple devotees(of Lord Ayappa, the son of Lord Shiva and Vishnu), the VIP Darshan were cancelled for the convenience of public. To add to our woes, we were told that the only slot available now is the 4:00 A.M. slot the next morning(Sunday). So what do we do now? Some said lets go back and come some other day. Others suggested to visit another temple nearby and head back. Some suggested that now that we have come so far we better have Darshan and leave early morning the next day. In the end, it was decided that we all stay back for the Darshan. So we got into the queue to get the tickets for the darshan (darshan queue is separate from this one). As the queue was pretty much stagnant, we resorted to our favourite pastime of Dumb Charades. After we had exhausted all the movies and our enthusiasm and 2.5 hours, we finally reached the counter and got our tickets and booked our Darshan for 4:00 A.M. the next day (Sunday).

With lots of time at hands and pretty less to do, we ventured out in the market to get some warm clothing as the chill had just begun to set in. The shops gave the clear idea that the economy of the town thrives around the temple itself. Few of us then proceeded in the search of accomodation for the night and rest of us to satiate the much-ignored hunger. After lots of hunting, we zeroed in on Rambagicha Guesthouse No 1. as the shelter for the night. The cleanliness at the guest house was a pleasant surprise considering that the temple gets nearly 60,000 visitors in a day. After a few hours of sleep and early morning ablutions, we started for the temple at 3:30 A.M. After depositing our footwear at the designated shoe counter, it was time to be a part of the serpentine queue. The queue was pretty long and there were lots of Sabrimala devotees as expected (you can tell them by their black dresses). One could hear all sort of languages in the queue, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Marathi etc. but the one common denominator here was the chants of "Govindaa Govindaa" that transcended all the barriers that language could have put. You could hear the Southern chants of "Venkatramana Govinda" and the Northern Chants of "Bolo Tirupati Maharaj ki Jai" beautifully complimenting each other. And all this while, there was constant chanting of shlokas from the Archana in the background. As we neared the temple all the queues, earlier segregated by the type of tickets purchased merged into one huge amalgamation and entered the Garbha Griha(Sanctum Sanctorum).

All this while I had a personal list of wishes and forgivenesses to ask from the lord and I kept chanting so as not to lose focus among this huge multitude of devotees. The moment we entered the Garbha Griha, the chants of "Govinda Govinda" reached a crescendo and the instant my eyes fell on the black idol of the lord, i forgot everything i had in my mind. The Aura of the idol totally numbed my mind, the chants faded into oblivion and the pushes and shoves didn't matter anymore. For the first time in my life, I was awestruck by the Lord himself. Only when we came out of the Garbha Griha, I realised that I had not prayed at all. I had just stared at the statue doing nothing. I think its for the people like me that the temples have this ritual of going to the back wall of Garbha Griha(on Vimana Pradakshinam - the path around the shrine) to pray and I did because that is the closest you will get to the idol of the deity even though there is a wall in between. After that we sat and prayed to the idol of Lord Venkateshwara on the Vimana (i.e. top of the gold-plated shrine). Then we proceeded towards the Srivari Hundi where the devotees were waiting to make offer to the Lord. Seeing the chaos at queue there, our friend Bhaskar pointed out correctly that perhaps this is the only place where people will die to give up money. After we had made our share of offerings, we were escorted to the exit door by the crowd (yes, lots of pushing and shovings involved here). On the way out, we were given the famous Tirupati Laddoo as "prasadam" which proved to be too little given its excellent taste. But there were special counters where you can get Laddoos when you show the entry tickets and we got lots of them to carry back home.

As we were done with everything, we started our return journey towards Chennai. Now that I was away from the multitude of people, I had all the time to look back and think about some questions that had come to mind but were left unanswered. What motivates the people to stand in the queues for 8-10 hours just to get a 10 second glimpse of the idol? What had motivated a man with a broken hand and a kid in other to risk both in this chaos and still manage to smile? What motivates people to throng to this place in thousands so that this place seems to be an epicentre of a 5000 years old religion? What motivates people to give everything in the name of the Lord? Did I see myself smiling and saying, "Faith moves mountains"?