THE DEVI'S CALL

It is still two hours to midnight. And it is pitch black. What you can see in the distance is the silhouette of a mountain, lit by a shadowed moon and the stars that have come out in full force. Ahead of you is a path, one that has to be judged since it cannot be seen. The best thing to do while moving forward is to put one foot ahead of another and keep your eyes on the person in front of you. This goes on for at least a kilometre. And even as you grapple with this rather ‘blind’ situation, the shouts of “side, side” unnerve you. These are the warnings yelled out by the palkhi-bearers who are carrying the pilgrims right up to the top. And then there are the horses too, their droppings making the road slippery. Not to forget that a thunderous shower has already done so. For a moment then you want to turn back and rush to the safety of your lodgings at the base of the hill. But you cannot. Faith, as they say, can move mountains.

This, and many more such experiences, is what gets weaved into the journey to Jammu and then to the temple of Vaishno Devi, located at a height of 5,577 feet. Climbing up in the darkness of the night (which is what most pilgrims do to avoid the heat of the day) is not for the faint-hearted, literally and metaphorically. It is a steep climb that often squeezes out every breath from your lung and very few can actually trek up for four hours at a stretch. Breaks after every few metres become essential. And incidentally, that’s true even when you are coming down. That’s because the gradient can be so steep at times that the pressure on your knees can be killing. All said and done, however, the fact that you are able to reach the temple and get those micro-seconds of ‘darshan’ is enough to make you forget about the breathlessness and the severe cramps in your feet.

I happened to go to Vaishno Devi in September purely by chance though it is believed that this opportunity comes only when the Mata calls you to her fold. A close friend right from early days in school, Gajanan Radkar, is now a colonel in the army and had been posted at Jammu. During every visit to Pune he would insist that we (which includes my other school chums Vipul Shah, Ganesh Shinde and Rajesh Bayas as also two other friends, S Vaidynathan and Dilip Bhandari) should visit him at Jammu and make the trek to Vaishno Devi. We would never find the time to do so, till everything suddenly slipped into place this time. Was that the Mata’s call? Perhaps. With just three days to spare, we decided to take an early morning flight to Jammu from Mumbai in September 2009 so that we would have almost the entire day before starting the trek at 5 pm.

With the advantage of having obtained an army pass (this allows you to bypass the long queue for entry to the temple complex), we set off for Katra which is the point from where you begin to climb upwards. A word about Jammu though. Known as the winter capital of J&K and the city of temples, Jammu is now more of an army base and it is a common sight to see long convoys of army trucks making their way to Kashmir. It also has the appearance of forlornness brought on no doubt due to the fact that not much development has taken place over the years. For those who wish to explore Jammu, there is the Nandini Wildlife Sanctuary best known for its wonderful species of pheasants, the Mansar Lake situated 62 kms away which is fringed by forest-covered hills, the Bahu Fort that is on a rock face on the left bank of the river Tawi, the Raghunath Mandir which was built in 1857 by Maharaja Gulab Singh, the founder of J&K and the Peer Kho Cave Temple with its legend of the Ramayan Bear God Jamvant having meditated here.

But, back to Vaishno Devi. Having reached Katra at around 6 pm, we immediately started on our way up, shuffling along with the devout pilgrims chanting “Jai Mata Di” and peering into the many shops that line both sides of the path. The vendors here sell a wide variety of goods – from T-Series’ audio CDs of religious songs (the company’s founder Gulshan Kumar was a firm bhakt of Vaishno Devi) to dry fruits and from flower garlands and rudraksh malas to plastic toys and make-shift restaurants offering rajma chawal and kadhi khichdi. But the ones that fascinated me the most were the photo studios. Each of these has a replica of the Devi’s cave with its three ‘pinds’ and you can click your photograph in a way that suggests that it was actually done in the temple at the top. This is convenient because you cannot do so in the actual temple where you are not even allowed enough time to say a prayer or two.

For those who are in the habit of trekking, Vaishno Devi should not pose a problem. For us, it turned out to be a mammoth task even as we heaved, puffed and panted our way to completing the four-hour journey. The mountains that lined the horizon stood like sentinels while the air vibrated with the chants of the pilgrims. After a kilometre or two the shops disappeared and what kept us going was the sight of the lights right at the top. To cut a long climb short, the temple complex, when you finally reach it, offers a dazzling array of bright lights and a serpentine queue to get the darshan. For us, because of our privilege status, the darshan was a quick affair and we were outside once again within the span of an hour. And then, of course, begins the weary way down.

The Vaishno Devi yatra is probably the most hallowed pilgrimage of northern India and attracts over 5 million devotees a year. The trek from Katra is of 13.5 kms, although it certainly appears to be longer than that if one were to measure it on a scale of effort. The best time to visit is between March and July. The abode of this goddess is in the mountains of Trikuta Hills and she resides in a beautiful cave in the form of three ‘pinds’ in the name of Maha Kali, Maha Laxmi and Maha Sarawati. According to mythological tales, Goddess Durga killed the demon Bhairon here. The cave is 30 metres in length and 1.5 metres in height.

It is believed that a Brahmin priest called Sridhar discovered the holy shrine of Vaishno Devi about 1,000 years ago. The other shrines at Vaishno Devi are the Bhumika Temple, Ban Ganga Temple, Charan Paduka Temple, Ardh Kuwari, the Sri Ram Temple and the Bhairav Temple. These are located at different heights and distances from Katra along the way to Bhawan, that being the main temple of Vaishno Devi. For those who may not want to climb as also not use the horse or palkhi service to reach the top, there is a helicopter service with regular flights from the airport at Sanjhi Chat in Jammu.

According to Hindu epics, Mata Vaishno Devi took birth in the South of India in the home of Ratnakar Sagar. Her worldly parents had remained childless for a long time. Ratnakar had promised, the night before the birth of the divine child, which he would not come in the way of whatever his child desired. Vaishno Devi was called Trikuta as a child. Later she was called Vaishnavi because of her taking birth from Lord Vishnu’s lineage. When Trikuta was nine years old, she sought her father’s permission for doing penance on the seashore. Trikuta prayed to Lord Vishnu in the form of Rama. During Shree Rama’s search for Sita, he reached the seashore along with his army.

His eyes fell on this divine girl in deep meditation. Trikuta told Shree Rama that she had accepted him as her husband. Shree Rama told her that during this incarnation he had vowed to be faithful to only Sita. However, the Lord assured her that in Kaliyuga he would manifest as Kalki and marry her. Shree Rama then asked Trikuta to meditate in the cave found in the Trikuta Range of Manik Mountains, situated in Northern India. Vaishno Devi decided to observe the ‘navratra’ for the victory of Shree Rama against Ravana. Hence one reads the Ramayana during the nine days of Navratra in remembrance of the above connection. Shree Rama promised that the whole world would sing her praise and Trikuta was to become famous as Vaishno Devi and thus become immortal forever.

Anyway, we began our descent at around midnight and reached the base at 4.30 am, our legs having turned to wooden pegs that would no longer bend or move. It was then that we spotted a maalishwallah who did a wonderful job of getting the blood back into circulation and relaxing the muscles. Sitting there on an embankment we looked up and wondered if we had really been up there and done the yatra. We had. There was the prasad and the chunri to serve as evidence. We could see the lights high up there, serving as beacons of hope to all those who come here to get their wishes fulfilled. “Wasn’t it worth it?” Col Radkar asked. We nodded, too taken aback by our own achievement to put anything into words.

Huned Contractor

TIRUPATI: A FEELING OF ONENESS

Atheists discard the theory of there being a god (or many gods). To them I would like to pose a question: What is it that makes your ego and all your materialistic concerns just crumble into nothingness when you come face to face with a deity, and in just maybe about 15 seconds you divest everything else from your mind and psychologically and physically bow down to seek attention from the one whom you can finally trust to resolve all your worries about the present and the future? I experienced that moment of divinity when I was finally jostled into position right in front of the statue of Lord Venkateshwara at Tirumala.

For those few seconds I did not register the weight of the huge crowd threatening to squash me against the wall and the railings. Nor did my ears absorb the strong collective murmur of the crowd. I felt supreme silence and salvation. And a sense of connection with the One who can spin things your way. I am sure that my friends Vipul Shah, Gajanan Radkar, Ganesh Shinde, Harsha Rao, Rajesh Bayas, Dilip Bhandari and S Vaidyanathan felt the same. The eight of us were in Tirumala on Saturday, December 18, 2010. The weather outside had a slight chill to it but inside the temple complex, crawling a few centimetres at a time to reach the sanctum sanctorum, we felt warm. And amazed.

Having somehow managed to gain entry into the middle of the serpentine queue, we bobbed along with the thousands of other devotees at around 11 pm. We joked and laughed, smiled at those around us, and at times responded to the chant of “Govinda, Govinda”. It was going to be a slow night. We knew that. But then we were in no hurry. Seven of us had come to Tirumala from Pune and Harsha had flown in from Singapore with the sole purpose of gaining the ‘darshan’ of Lord Venkateshwara.

Rajesh works with the banking sector in Mumbai and Gajanan is an army officer posted at Ahmednagar. Vipul, Dilip and Vaidyanathan run their own companies, Ganesh works in the telecom domain, Harsha is into financial and business management, and I head an industry newspaper. A good potent mix of experiences and domain knowledge, you could say.

Except for Vaidyanathan and Dilip, the rest of come from the same school and our bond of friendship goes back to the seventies when we were grapping with our algebra, geometry, geography, physics, biology and PT drills, among other adolescence-related queries and quests. This was our second ‘spiritual’ trip. The first one had been to Vaishnodevi in 2009. Tirumala had probably been suggested by Vaidyanathan. I am not sure but that does not matter. What does matter is that Vaidyanathan had taken upon himself the entire package of communicating with the group members, obtaining everyone’s confirmation for the journey, booking the tickets and accommodation well in advance, and ensuring that each one of us was ready to depart at the rather ungodly hour of 4 am on Saturday to catch the 5.55 am Indigo flight from Pune to Chennai.

We arrived at Chennai at around 8 am and Harsha, who had arrived from Singapore the day before, was already at the airport with a hired Tempo Traveller to take us directly to Tirupati. Believe me, it was one of the fastest journeys covering approximately 150 kms not because the driver Vimal was one of India’s road maniacs but for the fact that there was so much to talk about. And of course pull each other’s legs. “So why did you get into an industry publication? And what do you know about technology?” Harsha asked me.

After I had explained how it had been an extensive learning programme of almost a year for me to get a hang of the engineering that goes into the production of steel wire rods, cables, and fasteners, Harsha shot up his eyebrows and said: “You sure seem to be motivated.” It was good hearing that. Especially when you are at an age when the career graph begins to get into a phase of hibernation or stagnation.

The rooms at Hotel Maurya in Tirupati were good. But better still was the South Indian Thali we had at the restaurant attached to it. Lemon rice, chapatis, different types of vegetables, rasam, curd, pickles, papad…it was a perfect vegetarian meal. I am sure that Vipul must have been the happiest of the lot after tucking into this spread. It was time then to take off the shoes and indulge in a little nap. As also catch up on what the Indian cricket team was up to in South Africa. When we got ready to leave at 5 pm, the mood certainly was exuberant. It had been planned that while everyone else would climb their way to Tirumala, I would take the mini-bus right to the top. That’s because my knee was in no condition to take the strain of the steep steps.

So far, so fine. Then began the worries. Those who climb to Tirumala are given a free entry pass to the temple. I, however, could not get one because the counter for the Rs 300 ticket was closed and I just couldn’t manage to get the pass for free ‘darshan’. After several updates through our cell phones, I finally said to Vaidyanathan, “Look, you go to the temple. I don’t think I will be able to get the ‘darshan’. And so I will just wait here with the bus.” Now this is where you get to experience what good friendship is all about. Vaidyanathan and the rest of the gang weren’t going to let this be a status-quo position. After they had all trudged their way to the top, Vaidyanathan got into his ‘networking’ mode and quickly enough found one of the temple complex employees to not only get me a pass but also find a way for us to break into the queue.

Then, as said before, we shuffled, pushed, propelled, jerked, heaved and made some slow but ballistic progress toward the temple. Let’s have some facts here for those who haven’t been to Tirumala. The temple at Tirumala is one of the most revered Hindu temples of Lord Vishnu in the form of Lord Venkateswara located in the hill town of Tirumala near Tirupati in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. It is located 580 kms south of the state capital Hyderabad and 157 kms north-west of Chennai. The temple is situated on Venkatadri, one of the seven hills of Tirumala, and hence is also known as the Temple of Seven Hills. The presiding deity of the temple, Lord Venkateswara, is also known by other names such as Balaji, Govinda and Srinivasa.

The temple is reportedly the richest and the most visited place of worship in the world with up to 1,00,000 pilgrims arriving for ‘darshan’ daily. According to a legend, the temple’s deity is believed to have resided there for the entire Kali Yuga. In Sri Vaishnava tradition, the temple is considered one of the 108 Divya Desams. The huge complex comprises a smaller traditional temple building along with a number of modern queue and pilgrim lodging sites. For worshippers, the deity Venkateswara symbolises goodness. At just about midnight we finally found ourselves in the sanctum sanctorum. With the ‘darshan’ over in a jiffy, we made our way out but not without more of the pull and push affair.

We were back at the hotel at about 4 am after having lost one hour because and I and Vipul had got separated from the rest and had no clue about where the bus was. There was no way to communicate since our cell phones were in the bus. Finally, after clambering over a gate, we found the bus and fell into a state of semi-slumber, exhausted but rather thrilled at having done it. The next day, what with the return flight to Pune being at 9.30 pm, we took things easy and leisurely drove back to Chennai where we parked the bus by a beach and met up with Mohan, a friend of Vaidyanathan, Dilip and Gajanan. A plate of chilli pakodas and ice-cream with the waves crashing on the sand during the late evening hour replenished our energy levels and then it was time to get back to the airport where Harsha had a flight two hours later than ours to Singapore.

For anyone who might read this, it would appear that this was just an ordinary two-day trip to a religious place. So what made it extraordinary? Many things. But the biggest thing was the bonding we shared. Ours has always been a strong ‘root’ connection that can be traced back to our school days with Dilip and Vaidyanathan becoming such an integral part of it. But the fact that there is so much to exchange, share, and let our hair down over a short period is what adds extra adrenaline to this affinity and affiliation.

Then there were other things. We found, for example, that Harsha had quite a fetish about his bag – packing and unpacking frequently to place things properly and ensure that his footwear was as far away from the prasadam so as to avoid any ‘spiritual contamination’. Gajanan turned out to be a riot too with his ‘Santa Banta’ jokes that sometimes brought the house down and at times scraped the bottom of the barrel of amusement. Gajanan, we all owe you a party for keeping us in splits throughout our return drive.

Dilip is the quiet one but then once in a while he comes up with a repartee that can knock everyone down. Vipul is the focused one. We all agreed that he would have made a great career in the army. Ganesh and Vaidyanathan are the ‘practical’ guys who think out a way for everything through the use of logic. Rajesh is the dreamy one. He will look at you, smile and mumble, “Yaar, enough of idlis and dosas. Let’s have some fish for dinner.” So, closing the narrative, here are a couple of nuggets from Gajanan’s repository. Question: “Which is the toughest sport to watch?” Answer: Women's Beach Volleyball. Why? You figure it out. Okay, why does Banta place a full and an empty glass of water next to his bedside before he goes to sleep? Answer: He may or may not want to drink water during the night.

Now, here’s the best part of the trip. We have already chosen a place for our next year’s visit. It’s going to be Palitana, a religious Jain city in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat. The ball is now in Vaidyanathan’s court to get things organised.

Huned Contractor