OK almost after 4 months I am back to blog. Life was just moving in plain and somehow I did not get interested to do anything in particular so slowly I deserted myself from most of my hobbies. I don’t say I was relaxing but laziness wrapped me till neck deep and postponed many things which weren’t on priority list (don’t ask me what were thereJ ). Now I decided myself, I would share a post everyday regardless of what’s happening in my life. So I restart myself with my Tirupati experiences.
As we all believe & respect, Tirupati Balaji is most favorite GOD to many of the Indians, especially the southern’s. And I have a special love towards the ambience of Tirumala (for those who don’t know the uphill area is called Tirumala) apart from strong belief; I have in Venkanna (with Love). I got a chance to spend in Tirumala for a week doing the social service, as a scout. Generally we don’t get time to see him completely and I see regularly who miss to see him at all due to the crowd but as a scout we stand in front of the main Idol serving the pilgrims. We have a very good Darshan along with Variety of Prasadams.
This is the second time I am doing so and unlike last time, this time we had a SCOUT session for around 2 (Boring) hours. All we learnt is…ok ok…It was already boring.
As we reached Tirumala we saw people standing in free Darshan Queue for around 3 kms outside the Free Darshan complex. This is generally a slack season and we don’t see much crowd in this time of year but this time the crowd was too much…
However our Day duty started outside the temple with serving the people in Free Darshan complex. Public were waiting for hours (some more than 8 hrs) just to reach the free darshan complex and it may take couple of hrs for them to have darshan. Our duty is to assist them to come slowly, properly in line, control them if necessary. People were restless, trying to get out ASAP and some literally fighting…slowly I guess by night the crowd got controlled to some extent…
Monday evening was my first day duty inside the temple and our prime duties are to make people have a quick darshan. We don’t let them stand in front of God for more time as almost 1 lac more people await outside for darshan.
Good thing in this seva is as we serve the mankind and devotees, we can also view the God for nearly about couple of hours but we gents generally don’t stand there for so much time as we do a lot outside like assisting the handicapped, elders, controlling the public coming in and going out. Ladies do stand there for longer time in main temple (I know few ladies who just don’t come out at all).
This time the rush was so heavy that many of the special & VIP darshans got cancelled. There were no rooms available. We had to pull devotees like anything to make them move from in front of GOD. It’s funny Sometimes when we face a strong person who doesn’t move an inch from his position in spite of 2-3 of us pulling him aside, sometimes when they warn us to see our end and ask us to some out for a quarrel. While most of the times we totally understand that the devotees who’s standing in queues for hours and then can see only for very shorter period gets agitated; we maintain our patience and dignity but sometimes we too get heated up but controls ourselves and serve the next devotee at the best I can, at least for myself. Its pity when we see people who close their eyes, who stare at US, who try to talk/show to their spouses, kids, relatives many of them grown up and misses to see God; and many a times the partner would have seen the God but this fellow misses it. I would not say it’s funny but end of the day we can’t stop our self laughing when we discuss happenings of that day in our rooms.
We, almost 20 of us scouts share a single room and this time there was much youth and we enjoyed like everything outside the duty. We went to Srivari Padalu, Japaali, Papavinashanam and I felt like my college days are back. I was a kid again and I did all I have done around 10-12 years back J (don’t ask me what in Public). Over all It was good but lately many of us had fell sick due to not having proper food and sleep and mostly it as our fault cos’ we ignored the basic food & sleep while concentrating on Entertainment.
Over all it’s a wonderful experience of serving mankind, spending a week in Tirumala, Having Darshan everyday and enjoying. I look forward for many such trips in future
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