Chalo bulawa aaya hai?
The title of this post means : Come, the call has come! Why the question mark? Well, that will become clear soon enough. There is a Vaishnao Devi temple in north India and it is said that unless She calls you to come, visiting the temple is not possible.
It’s Navaratra ( nine nights ) festival right now and the Goddesses (or Devis) are supposed to be extremely powerful in this period. The festival finishes on the the 10th day with Dassera or Durga pooja. There is a temple a few kilometers from our house called the Chatushringi Temple. It houses an idol of Vaishnao devi. My sis, ,mom and mom’s friend wanted to go to the temple - and guess who drove them there….
Here it began. On normal days, there is car parking in the temple itself. But for these nine days, due to the sheer number of people who throng the temple, parking has to be found elsewhere. So, we went looking for parking. After some 10 minutes, we found an out of the way side lane and managed to park the car.
A few words about the temple. The sanctum sanctorium is situated on the top of a hill and there is a broad avenue running from the base of the hill to the top of the hill with steps cut into it so that devotees may climb easily. There are two flat areas where smaller temples have been made for Lord Ganesha. All in all, there must be nearly 500 steps from the base of the hill to the top.
So, we enter the temple and are immediately assaulted by cacophony. I’ll say this honestly - if there was a blind man in there - he would say he was at a fun fair and not at a temple. It was ridiculous - there was a mini circus, eateries by the dozen and shops by the score. And people screaming at you at the top of their lungs - only Rs.25/- for a darshan (viewing) of the devi. Oh - and when I say fun fair - I mean it - have you ever seen a ferris wheel within temple grounds? It was crass commercialization all the way. Well, we weren’t interested in buying tickets - so we started climbing the steps. As we went, we saw that the line for the darshan started right at the top and people were standing in a serpentine queue that stretched all the way back to the gate. When we reached the second landing - from here you can see the entrance to the main temple, we were politely told that if we wanted to go further, we had to buy a ticket and stand in line. WE told them we just wanted to go till the level of the main temple and return - but to no avail . So, we turned back and came home.
Well, that was that. Busy studying right now - have a practical exam and an oral withing one day of each other and a Lex & Yacc extra ecture tomorrow.
Jai Mata Di!
