It may seem that I took a long break to narrate my Day 2 experience. But the long break was necessary to make sure I narrate this without any bias to anyone or any institution.
I descended at the entry gate around 5.oo am hoping that I might be lucky this time with a short wait. I was immediately directed to a much longer queue still further away. The early morning tea was like drinking hot sugar syrup. After an hour-long wait, the queue started moving. I saw myself back at the entrance that I was trying to get in twice yesterday and once today. However, the queue moved pretty fast and in no time (is one hour time in Tirumala’s time) faced the security waiting to scan our tokens.
Many behind me were worried as the tokens had a 24-hr expiry time. As mine was expiring in the afternoon, I was not worried but realized that correct information can never be at your finger tips. I had to surrender my cell phone(yes, this time I was not ready to part with it till such it was taken away from me!) to get a collection receipt. I was then directed to enter one of those waiting rooms that I always dreaded to enter. My wife and my sister’s son was not that much concerned as they were relieved to escape from the two and half hours wait standing outside to a place where they can at least sit.
Soon, the waiting room with 200 seating capacity got filled with double that capacity. After some 30 minutes, the crowd seemed to settled down. I thought of taking a nap, but soon woke up to the noise of people rushing to the side of the room forming a queue to get something. I too got up to stand in the queue and soon realized it was to get free hot milk. As soon as the counter opened, there was a mad rush to grab those hot cups! Gee! no one seemed to care hurting others with that hot milk. I was kind of sandwiched between many of those and felt as if I was getting squeezed between two rollers smelling of all sorts of bodily and clothing odours. Should I complain about that? Yes! When I was turned away wearing the fresh cloth, don’t they at least realize that they should be turning away those who have not come fresh to see the Lord?
The guy at the counter was shouting at everyone, and I too was shouted at to move after picking up a cup and refusing to give me an other cup even after showing that I was carrying my wife’s token for the milk. Another hour passed and the same thing repeated, but this time for upma. Since I was aware of the drama with the milk wait, I was smart enough to wait till the queue cleared to pick up hot upma.
After these two unpleasant experiences but a very thoughtful service, I thought the things would improve, but it did not and started to get ugly. It was extremely agonizing to sit there and do nothing. Since people were sleeping all over the place, it looked like a war zone where you would see people tossed around not dead, but exhausted.
I do not dare to share what else happened just to avoid the wrath of many of those villagers who were unmindful of following hygiene, undisciplined to ignore the proper disposal of waste and much more. When we were finally let out after some four hours of wait inside the cage, there was a mad rush by people to get past slow walkers to form yet an other queue to collect tokens for laddu. Another milk/upma saga ensued without much of a warning and we thanked our stars to come out of it in one piece once more.
I was just hoping that there will be no such episodes anymore till we reached the temple. When we started to cross the road on a cat walk, I thought at least the Darshan would be worth it, will happen pretty soon and are getting lucky finally.
As soon as I entered the doors of the temple, I was thrilled to see the inside of the temple at last. I was hoping that a 4-row queue will become 1-row queue for Darshan and I was ready to hear that dreaded ‘padandi’ which deprives us of a peaceful darshan – yes that padandi drowns your prayers so much, you regret to have taken all that effort to get the darshan. I don’t think Lord Venkateshwara dreamed of this outcome when he decided to make Tirumala as his abode.
But it was worse than no ‘padandi’ with no 1-row queue. Instead it became 4-plus-row queue with volunteers literally shoving the people from behind. This one I thought was worse than the treatment inside the cage. I am not sure how someone would feel when shoved from behind like animals being shoved as a herd without any regard for safety for you or for the person in front of you. As such I was squeezed tight and with difficulty I moved to the outer side to escape, but was unceremoniously pushed from behind. The nightmares of shoving by those volunteers creep up my memories even today much more than the 3-second darshan that I wanted to implant in the memory.
No one has treated me like that I don’t want anyone to be treated like that. Even if the queue lengthens to two-plus days, I will be ready for it if the darshan can last at least for 10-seconds with peace. I felt that the darshan time was lot less, just a few seconds – like a blip in the sky. Even if I could have seen the Lord Venkateshwara for few seconds, I would have been happy if I had been treated like a human being rather than an animal in the herd.
The solution to this is very simple. Create escalator type walkway in front of Lord Venkateshwara and let people move from top down to the door step and out. You can still move the crowd in a five or six people per row and the crowd will exit without being pushed.
Just think on this concept and improvise on it as much as you can to let people have a peaceful darshan than ‘padandi’ or shoving darshan. I don’t think the hindu faith would be palatable for newer generations if this continues.
May Lord Venkateshwara bless all devotees without any regard for race or creed, being poor or rich, believers or non-believers alike.