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"?