Close,Closer and Closest to the God All Mighty!

It was the first leg of my Holy trail and I was completely unprepared for this one as it came unexpected and much before the scheduled plan. I was slowly recovering from another tiring trip to “GOD’S on country’’ and was not in a position to push myself to Tirupati along with my colleagues. The moment I reached office and before I could park my vehicle in the basement, my boss gave his typical shout from his car, this time thankfully not for any sales figures, but for getting into the car.

Without a second thought, I got into the car as the whole scene happens every time our team goes out for lunch. By the time we reached the first signal, which is around 500 metres from our office I realised that we were on our way to Tirupati. After a hectic 6 hour drive, we were at Tirupati, the foot steps of Tirumala.

Our Hyderabad Branch had arranged for a recommendation letter from the CM’s office for the stay and other things over there. As planned, myself and one of my colleague drove up the hill in our car along with a local fellow while the rest of the team decided to walk the 9km stretch. Finally when I reached the Executive Officer’s (EO) office, I was a bit startled by the arrangements and the kind of “war of the words” happening there. In fact, I was feeling inferior as the rest of the people standing over there had recommendations from PM’s office, CJI etc. And for a moment, the so called EO looked like Hitler to me. Finally after almost an hour, I could squeeze in to his room and show the letter. The moment he saw it, he asked for the original copy which was at our Hyderabad branch. I was expecting a negative answer from him as there were many before me who went back with out any stay even with the so called recommendation from a VVIP.

But ultimately, it was our responsibility to arrange makhan to my teammates who will be arriving on top of the hill after a hectic climb. For me it was more of a Kapda, Khana & makhan issue as I was completely in my formals without anything to change. The local fellow who accompanied us tried his best through some of his contacts though everything was in vain. I was feeling more agitated seeing the whole issue as we could see lots of vacant cottages all around us and the way the whole place is commercialised and how badly the people with out any kind of recommendations were treated. Finally by around midnight, we managed to arrange 3 rooms in a Brahmin guest house, which again was just for 7 hours.

Things went on smoothly there after and a few dramas happened in between where I misplaced my wallet and blocked all my cards doubting if I lost it. But the funniest part of all was when the whole team shaved our head!!!!! Then there was the biggest shock of my lifetime, darsan according to your wallet power, which I never expected out of a holy place like Tirupati. Though I have heard people saying about this special darsan and all, seeing was always different from hearing. I felt really bad of the whole scene as many people were standing in the queue for long hours while people like me had a nice, easy and fast special darsan shelling out an extra 300 bucks. To be very frank I even thought of dropping the idea of having a darsan seeing the discrimination over there. End of the show was not that bad as the main deity was indeed special and rejuvenating. Hopefully things would change for the good for me and probably not for umpteen aam admi who don’t have an extra 50/300 bucks to shell out. Wish we could at least save our Gods, holy places and the rituals from the commercialisation, globalisation or whatever you call it.

I am not an atheist, but whatever it may be the reason, I don’t think it’s fair to discriminate people in a holy place like Tirupati, that too in a country like India where in religion is more of a mass hysteria than belief!!!!