An Excellent Journey to Tirupati

Little did I know, when I was getting ready to get into the bus at 9:00 PM on Friday night of 21st of March, that I was about to make such an interesting trip!

It was almost 8:20 PM when I got an auto rickshaw to reach the boarding place from where I needed to get into the bus to “TIRUPATI”. As usual, I had reached much late than the scheduled time (As most of you must have experienced that it’s my habit to always be late in all the things). Somewhere in the corner of my mind, I was sure that today I am going to miss the bus, but, not as usual, I was not really late enough to miss the Bus. In fact, this time, surprisingly, the Bus was much late than I was (Almost an hour). I heaved a sigh of relief but little did I know that this was just a beginning of the “fruitless long waiting” and “tiring” journey ahead!

It was during this one hour (from 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM) that I discussed with my trip-mate Rajesh about the experience I had last time when I visited Tirupati some three months ago. But, I never expected that my last experience was just a trailer. The actual movie was yet to come!

After waiting on the footpath for almost an hour, without having dinner, my feet had already begun to crumble in pain. As they say, well begun is half done, so it’s true the other way around too – “Not so well begun means worst is yet to come”.

The least we (me and Rajesh) expected was a Bus without push back seats and without a place to place our luggage! Awful, I whispered to myself and somehow settled down on one of the 3 seats (near window). Within a fraction of second, I realized that my knees were being “pushed back” by the seat in front row. I was wondering is this the real concept of push back seats (push back the knees of others)!

I was trying to relax my nerves and was preparing to sleep by closing my eyes, when all of a sudden my ears blew with a sound that drew away the rarest of possibilities to get a sound sleep. It was the cry from a movie actress which came from two television sets placed in the Bus, looking at which I was totally taken aback! It was certain that these two TV’s were not going to be shut until we reach our destination. So, I thought its better to try and get entertained by the so-called comedy movie being telecasted. Off course, the language was terra-incognita for me, but the loud expressions of all the actors were enough for me to understand what was happening in the movie. I don’t really remember when I fell asleep in midst of all these odds. But, not very surprisingly, at around 2:30 AM in the morning, a shrill scream took away all the remnants of sleep from my soul!

Nevertheless, I again tried to watch the movie with the fullest of enthusiasm trying to figure out how a drop of rain (falling from far away space) instills life into a dead person and how the so-called dead Hero gets up and kills everybody around with a weapon which was pierced into his body, possibly, by some enemy. After all this, the Hero throws the weapon high up in the air and we see a subtitle under the weapon “INTERVAL”. Oh My God! It was really unbelievable! It all appeared like a cross between some highly animated Hollywood movie action flick and a highly dramatic Bollywood movie sequence.

The movie started off all over again with a flashback into the Hero’s past life which was full of unbelievable stunts. I was being amazed with these action flicks when all of a sudden the TV went dead. It was then, when I noticed that we have landed onto the holy land of Tirupati, so the driver had switched the Idiot Box Off. It was almost 3:00 Am in the morning now.

So, finally the “not so good” journey in the “not so good” Bus had come to a close. Not sure what we were supposed to do after getting down from the bus, we were waiting for the guide to do what he is supposed to- guide! But, he reluctantly gave us a deaf ear when we tried to enquire about the “darshanam”.

We had actually booked for a total package which included onward and return journey tickets, accommodation and food facilities. We had also assumed that the package includes the tickets for darshanam, so we were really unaware of the trouble that waited in ambush that morning! The truth finally dawned upon us and we were guided to a place where our eyes could not believe what they saw. It was a huge Queue of people who had turned that Saturday for the darshanam. It was 3:30 by then and we had not yet consumed even a pail of water since we had boarded in the “BUS”. Till then, some of our co-trip-mates had already started arguing with the driver and the guide for not being informed earlier about the non-inclusion of darshanam tickets in the package. Rajesh did even a better job; he called up the travel agent at Bangalore who had booked our tickets. But, even this moron reluctantly quoted “Sir, you need to wait in the Queue and take tickets.”

After a lot of arguments all of us realized that it was worthless and we somehow managed to get into the Queue which apparently did not end! Only thing now we all wanted is to know how long we are going to wait in this Queue. The guide said “You shall certainly get the tickets within an hour sir” with utmost confidence. His confidence encouraged our disappointed souls and we readied ourselves for the same.

It was more than an hour now (around 4:45 AM), and our legs had not yet moved an iota of 1/1000th of a KM! Frustration had started building up in all of our minds. It was quite obvious that all of us were so very much annoyed by all this, that even a small mistake from anybody else would lead into a big quarrel. As the fate would have it, some pilgrims tried to intrude into the Queue. That’s all! All of a sudden, a fire of rage broke and those poor pilgrims were accused of being criminals for trying to intrude. Some one of us even went to an extent that he mentioned “If you enter into this Queue like this, God will surely punish you”. Those pilgrims had no option other than retreating back and finding some better place for intrusion.

It was almost 5:45 now and we had moved a considerable amount of distance till then. Nobody had any idea about how long is it going to take. We were going through lots of twists and turns in the Queue and finally we reached a place which we thought was the last turn and immediately after crossing this, we would be in front of the ticket counter. But, destiny had something else for us in its basket! It was almost 6:30 now and it started drizzling and we were amused by the powdery drops of rain. We were happy that God is showering His blessings on us. Little did we know that this blessing is soon going to shape up into a curse? Unexpectedly, it started raining cats and dogs and all the people started running helter-skelter in search of a shelter and while doing so most of them took undue advantage of situation as intrusion was easiest at that time! It was hell for all of us because we were almost near the rescue point when this torrential rain broke out and washed away all our hopes to reach the ticket counter.

It was very clear by now that, we will now have to wait for even longer. I heard some person saying something about the maximum number of pilgrims they allow per day. I could not interpret the conversation because it was in some language I did not understand (Tamil, Kannada, or Telugu - All sound very similar to me). I made my way somehow to that person and tried to get more information about it. Fortunately, he could converse in English (a common language for both of us) and suddenly a cold wave ran through my nerves when I realized that they do not let more than 8000 people per day. I could see more than 8000 people around me and was not sure how many more people had already taken the tickets and how many more were standing on the other side of the last turn.

This information hit all of us like a lightening stroke and we started finding various solutions to this problem. Apparently, there were none! Rajesh suddenly thought of a way out from this mess. He pointed out to a narrow route from where we could intrude into the Queue and get ahead of most of us. Brilliant Idea, I said and jumped with joy! Like some detective movie, we guided ourselves with gestures and facial expressions so that others do not follow us. With full zeal (whatever was left over) we succeeded in the plan and reached the place. I had never felt so relieved before this. It was like having crossed the last lap in “Need for Speed”. But again, since God would not let us win in this race, the Queue went to a standstill and we were trapped in a place where I was feeling totally suffocated and for a moment even thought that I might not be able to reach home safely.

It was 7:30 by now and I could not see any ray of hope in the horizon. I always believed that “Every cloud has a silver lining”. But the circumstances did not substantiate my belief. Lots of thoughts were striking my mind when all of a sudden I felt very much like the water confined in a dam that is suddenly released to fall down onto turbines with electric speed. Without any effort, I reached out to the place from where the “Final Destination” was a few yards away. Now nothing could stop us from getting what we were longing since ages- tickets! But that was not true, as they nothing is impossible, it happened and we were bewildered and baffled when the temple officers announced that no more tickets shall be distributed!!! I was white with shock but at the same time also was relaxed that at least this mess has come to an end. But it was not over yet! How could you expect that you take almost 4 hours to reach a place and you would out of it within seconds? This was the worst part of that tragic journey. Wait, and wait more, to be out…

It took not more than 15 minutes to come out of that dreadful place but it appeared more than 4 hours to me. (Wait for other parts of journey)