Mini pilgrimage to Tirumala and neighborhood

I was on a mini pilgrimage to Tirumala and its neighborhood of Tiruchanur and Kalahasthi.

But I am not going to write a travelogue this time, so you can be happy.

My parents and a cousin of mine all went as part of an AP Tourism's package to these places. The trip started on Friday evening around 6.15 PM and we came back to Chennai some 24 hours later.

It was actually quite a hectic tour. And I would not recommend this tour to anyone, because its really tiring. You barely get to sleep for 2-3 hours in the hotel room they give you. Other than that, its left to catching an hour or so on the drive.

And to answer the most obvious question of "Darisanam nanna kedachudha?", all I can say is that its the same amount of darshan that all of us get, subject to the mercy of the volunteer who pulls you first and then pushes you into the hands of the eagerly waiting next volunteer. The process continues till you are quite literally pushed out.

On a very serious note, the treatment meted out to the devotees by these volunteers is extremely disrespectful. They don't treat you as human beings. Next time you pass by a site where a building is being constructed, please observe the way the laborers pass on the "bond" containing the "kalavai of simintu, jelly and manal".

Its the exact same way we devotees are handled by those TTD volunteers. I agree that its a thankless job considering the sheer volume of people who throng the temple. But do they think, even for a minute, how bad their actions are at a human level? Everyone does want to spend a lot of time watching the deity and praying. And to manage the crowd you have to make the devotees move, so that the next one gets the opportunity.

But, if you resort to this relay race approach, I cant even see the deity for a fraction of the second. As a normal human being, I am subjected to react to any untoward forces being applied on my body. I start trying to counter-balance all these pulls and pushes and end up not seeing the deity.

The serious devotee might be free from all such distractions and could have his thought process totally focused on the deity. But normal people like me, actually end up not having the basic darshan that I came for. The darshan for which I stood for more than an hour in long cage like structures.

To be very frank, I don't have a good recollection of having seen Balaji up close. Whatever I was able to see thanks to the slightly sloped ramp they have set up before you enter the main room, thats all I can remember. Up close, I don't think I saw much or even prayed much.

Anyways, since it was a packaged tour, we were then hustled into boarding the bus and were given some time at Tirupathi to have a breakfast. I was quite famished considering the ordeal that I went through in the morning and also the fact that I hadn't eaten anything properly on Friday too.

Afterwards we were taken to Tiruchanur where again there was this big queue for the darshan. It was slightly better organised than the one at her hubby's abode. We were then taken to Kalahasthi where too the treatment was much better.

Then after a lunch stop around 1 o clock at Puttur, we finally reached the starting point at T.Nagar around 4.

All in all it was quite a tiring trip, but the only good thing is that I at least got to see these temples after a year.