Quote:
Originally Posted by advaitlele Hi Star,
I have been reading your log since beginning but never really posted reply. This one liner from one of the bike ads that MS Dhoni endorses would tell you what I feel about your log, its variety, photos and narration and about you "Star hai tu to yaar". |
Thanks very much Advait for reading the log. I always used to be confused to the fact that the thread had so many views, but very few comments. now I know..
Other than the screen name / handle on this forum, there is nothing "Star" about me. i am just another person who likes small pleasures of life.
This is first time i am trying at penning down a seperate travelogue.
I feel happy that all of you are liking it. Thanks for your appreciation.
Moving to the new year side of the story....
As regular, woke up at 6 AM from my sleep, both wife and daughter were still in their sleep. Realized that it is a new year day, Tried to wake up the remianing two, but they simply ignored and continued to remain in their posture. After 20-25 minutes of trying, both of them opened
their eyes. I told them that it is a new year, wished them a great year ahead, asked them get up,get ready so that we can go to the Chamundi Hills early.
Eventually everybody left the bed by 6.45 AM. by 7 AM, the neighbouring kids were knocking the door and asking my daughter to come out to play with them. Eventually we got ready by 7:30 Am, had our breakfast in the resturant, checked out, moved out luggage to the vehicle. Asif bhai was ready, having washed and cleaned his vehicle ready to go. We eventually started at 8:30 AM towards Chamundi hills.
I think, the climb took some 15-20 minutes, The parking was already full. We started climbing the stairs barefooted. Bought some offerings viz Coconut, fruits, flowers etc for the godess on the way, when we reached the temple, found that it had long queue already. There were three
queues viz. Dhamadarshan (= free entry), Normal Entry (=entry fee of RS 10 or 20 ??), Special Entry (entry fee of RS 100), Surprisingly the ticket queue for special entry was longer than normal ticket window. We found that the Free entry and normal fee queues were very very long.
We estimated that if we stood in those queues we would spend the whole day there itself. So stood in the queue fo special entry to buy the ticket. But some people who think they are very smart and very dear to the godess kept on ignoring the people who stood in the queue and
went to the people who were near the ticket window and managed to get into the queue or gave them the money to buy the tickets. Even though the people in the queue objected to it, these people were so shameless, they started fighting with the people in the queue.
So eventually after some 30 minutes in the queue, i could buy the tickets. Godess seems like the youngerl kids so there was no entry fee for kids (below 10 years i think). Then we moved towards the queue of poeple who were waiting to enter the temple.
This queue was almost 200 meters. Same behaviour was found in this queue also. After spending some 30 minutes in the queue we were about to enter the temple door. One very smart (= in marathi we call them Deed Shana = 1.5x smart) guy just came and stood in front of me. Naturally i objected. He had such an audacity to push me back and his body language was as if he wanted to have a wrestling match with me, it appeared as if the guy wanted to hit me.
Eventually I thought "Why I am here ?.. to take the belssings of the godess for the new year, so i do not want to get into any man handling or
fights", so I dis-engaged (ofcourse with disgusting feeling about the behaviour of the person)
After the main door, all the queues merged. It was vertually a stampade inside. A lone security guard was trying to streamline the crowd. Naturally he was not successful. Smarter people kept on coming in from the oppposite side (=exit side of the door). By the time (after another 30-45
minutes) i faced the god mother chamundi, i was disgusted of this experience, all the positive thoughts vanished from the mind, i could not offer my prayers as per my wish, i could not even look into the eyes of the godess even for a moment, the priest snatched the offerings from my
hand, returned the prasadam using his other hand, lady guard just pushed me towards the exit door.
So the efforts (=struggle) of almost 90 minutes ended in re-inforcing my belief that i should pray from my home and i should not visit any of these commercialized temples.
I remembered a famous marathi abhang "Deva devarhya tha nahi, Deva nahi Devalayee.." (= God does not reside in the place of worship, God is not even in the temple...) This abhang concludes that God is every where, most importantly, it is within us. So being at peace with oneself is the best prayer one can offer to the god/godess.
At the exit.. police had arrived...now the lesser among the smarter people were either arguing with the policemen, more smarter among them were still entering the temple via exit lane. Life goes on....May the Godess shower her best belssings on these smart, smarter and smartest people.
With that wish we moved on. Took some photographs. a customery one with Mahishasura, the demon killed by mother chamundi. The wave of pilgrims was rising. we slowly walked back to the parking lot, got into the car, started driving towards the Nandi.
Some pictures of Chamundi Hills attached here..