How patient are you ???

Well, the title might sound weird to be presented in a travel blog. But, you would accept it as you complete this post . After a very long time, I happened to go on for a drive over the past weekend. It was a pilgrimage, which me and 3 of my friends took up. I guess, now you should be able to relate on which place I am talking about. Yes, Its none other than our famous Tirupathi temple, which is really popular for testing people’s (not all of the people though) patience.

We set out from Bangalore by Car at about 6PM on Friday (17-May-2013). With a pit stop for refueling our stomachs at Hotel Pavithra near Chithoor, we managed to reach alipiri (which is the downhill for pedestrians to tirupathi) at about 10:45 PM. This is not the first time that I am climbing the hill, (see my previous post on my first time experiences on walking up hill), still went on with a doubtful mind about completion. The two main reasons being growing old and the addition of extra pounds of flesh . As usual, the initial stretch of about 1500 steps were really tough, adding to that, there were humongous number of people walking up the hill. It was as crowded as a city bus stand, at a few places, we had to wait behind a lot of people to cross certain steps. We managed to reach atop – overcoming all the difficulties, yet enjoyed the climb- by about 2:30 AM. There is a place called “Madhava Nilaya” which is built primarily for the use of pedestrians to get refreshed there before they get into the temple. It was maintained in a pretty decent way. Yet, there could still be some improvements done in maintenance. We went and refreshed there and joined in the queue by about 3:45AM

This is when the test for our patience started, which all of us in great excitation, took up with a very happy face. Though the movement was in inches, we were kind of happy to see the queue kept moving minute by minute until around 5:00AM. It came to a stand still then, and we were all very drowsy and dozed  off standing there itself. Then, somehow managed to park our seats on the floor and again slept off there. We got up after a while only to realize we were at the same place for the past one and half hour. Yet, the nap made us feel a bit refreshed, moved ahead in the queue and somehow managed to enter into the cages[those fenced waiting rooms, I don’t get any better names for them!!!] by about 7:15AM

There are a lot of things which were disturbing during our wait. The first one was when one of the guys there - I believe he is from TTD(Thirumala Tiurpathi Devasthana) or an ally to them- whom I approached to check when would they open the cage, started asking me about my whereabouts and was checking with me if I would be interested to pay Rs.800/- to get the darshan faster in an hour. We ignored him and went ahead and started waiting. Usually, there used to be a lot of people outside of these wait areas that once they get cleared, they would open up these rooms, but to our surprise, we couldn’t find so much of crowd outside also, still we were locked in and made to wait. They served us Curd rice to have as breakfast and the wait continued on, until we heard from another TTD guy that they would open us up by about 11 AM. It was already 4 hours of sitting inside the room and about 3 hours of wait prior to that in the queue.

This was not actually the end of it, we were not really allowed to go by 11AM, but they started letting some other people in and we were made to wait still longer Most of the guys went outrageous and they started climbing over the fence and started jumping to the other side and joined the queue.We still continued to wait until they open up. Again by 1PM they served some sambar rice for all of those pitifully waiting folks. After one or two shout outs with the volunteers there, we managed to get out of the cage at about 2 PM. Fortunately, it was relatively a faster movement of the queue post this and we managed to complete the darshan by 3 PM. So, that’s close to 12 hours of wait, which made me realize, I still have the ability to sit/stand idle at a single spot for hours together without doing absolutely nothing

What was frustrating was, the way TTD people treat the people coming in divya darshan. Just because they have not paid anything for ticket, free food were served during waiting, they are not meant to made wait for a longer time than others those who pay for the darshan and get it done sooner. The people who had a great deal of devotion, dedication and commitment and who walked all the way up hill to see the God was put aside for the ones who pay a hefty amount to make easy way out to get a darshan. I was really wondering where are we heading to, its become like, there is nothing in this world, without money. ‘Money makes everything merry’. So, we felt like they don’t want people to come under free darshan that they treat them this way, so that they can make more money. And this money making doesn’t just end here. When there are dedicated counters for darshan tickets, why should someone ask people coming to free darshan to pay more to get their darshan soon. Even the prasadam for that matter, people kept coming behind us and asking “Sir, do you need extra laddoos? “. Everyone is trying in every other way to make money and money and money and temples are the best places these days for that.

Anyways, with all sort of discussions about the wait and the trip, we drove back to Bangalore and reached home by 11:00PM.

Think, I have tested your patience more than how mine was tested during the trip . Let me stop it here. Pour in your experiences and thoughts in comments