Tirupati – 07-Feb-2010

After a huge deliberation spanning over 4 months and 6 days, I finally decided to meet God. I had promised Him that if he gives me what I am asking for, I would return to meet Him only to ask for something else! The promise made on 09-Apr-2009 was thus fulfilled.

Due credit has to be given to Saap for delaying my meet with God. Kudos to his sinister planning and excuses as absurd as he himself led to the delay. Be rest assured that the main elements of his excuses namely the dentist, eye surgeon, office boss, girls whom he goes to visit on some weekends in Hyderabad in relation to holy matrimony etc. have not been spared. I have asked God to punish them in the following ways:-

Dentist & Eye Surgeon – Plucks out Saap’s tonsils/ eye sockets respectively & Saap sues them for a million dollars. I think million dollars is worthwhile enough to sacrifice Saap’s tonsils and eye sockets!

Office Boss – Saap to be assigned to him/ her for a lifetime … that would be some punishment for the boss

Matrimonial Profiles – Saap actually marries one of them … no bigger punishment could be in store for the girl

I can keep cussing Saap here till people can lick their elbows but I better move on to the tour itself.

As I stepped into Vista holidays to enquire about the Tirupati package, I was greeted by a cheerful looking man. The affable nature of the man made me ignore the kind of language he spoke, it was neither Hindi nor English. As he continued giving me information on the package with animated hand gestures in an alien language, I thanked my good foresight; Foresight of seeing the news for Deaf and Dumb on Sunday 14:00 hours on DD. I could relate the hand gestures which the man was making with something I probably saw 15 years earlier on TV. Smug by my brilliance of actually understanding an alien language with just hand gestures, I made the payment for the Tirupati Package.

{Btw … did u guys try to lick your elbows … I think u did … even I tried it before I penned it down}

Also in the shop was a typical South Indian lady; thick hair that were tightly wound in a choti with some mogras and orange color flowers, a sari so bright that it could give an inferiority complex to the sun and a rhythmic tone when she spoke. She had a Vista holidays brochure in hand along with 5 other travel agent brochures, Indian railway map and a knowledge of railway routes so dismal that an abyss might seem like a golf hole. I was scared that she might ask me which train to take from Port Blair to Kavaratti, so I ejected myself from the shop.

D day of the travel arrived … a cool Saturday evening and I had landed a cool seat too. It was seat no. 39 last but one row in the Volvo. Given the fact that I find it hard to sleep in a bus, add to it the 2^nd last row … I knew I would not be sleeping that night. Luckily I had a companion in the form of a book (3 men in a boat). Switching on the reading light in the bus, I turned to reading as my night activity. Apparently my reading light was disturbing a young couple seated one row ahead of me. The young man asked me to switch off the light to which I replied that I was reading. He suggested that it is better we all take some rest. Now since I find difficult to say no to anyone, I was about to tell him to let me finish 3 pages and the light will be off. Just then his wife spoke up in a sarcastic tone, “It is 10pm”. I thought whether 10pm was veneration and that we have to sleep by that time. I was going to retort that, “Yes young lady, it is ONLY 10pm. You have been sleeping since 8pm from the time the bus started. I ain’t as slothful as you”. But the fact that I was going for a noble cause made such a remark un-necessary. Instead I asserted that I would read for a while to which the young couple gave up, pulled up the shawl over their faces and started muttering in some maggi language (my guess was kannada). I registered this as yet another event in human kind when a female spoke when she was not required to, spoke what she was not supposed to, spoke in a way she was not supposed to and basically ruin a situation which was about to be solved amicably. I had no doubt in my mind that the female must have instigated her poor husband to ask me to shut the light in the first place!!

As the clock moved towards 11pm, I decided to retire my book not because my reading light was disturbing someone but because my laughter in the silent bus could be heard echoing around. {Did I mention that 3 men in a boat is a damn funny book?}. Scared of being labeled moonstruck and not wanting to wake up people, I reluctantly kept the book aside, reclined my seat and started night dreaming about sleep.

The condition of the road from Bangalore to Tirupati is poor to say the least. The Volvo sputtered, shrieked and spat venom as though it had a fight for survival with the road, the suspension did its best and worked like a trampoline to keep the passengers from falling off their seats, the horn screamed as if it was a cry to declare war on other vehicles and the steering rotated at an rpm of 16000 to snake through the narrow national highways NH4 and NH18. If such excitement could be offered by non-living things I wondered what the mortals sleeping in the bus could offer me. So the next 2.5 hours were invested to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of human sleep in a bus.

I started with my neighbor. From the crisp white shirt which wasn’t tucked in, a formal greenish grey trouser and chappals worn along with it, it left no doubt in my mind that he was from Andhra. With every daring twist n turn the Volvo took, the snores of this man turned from poetry to shrieks. I was amazed to hear the repertoire of snores this man possessed. Some of the snores were a hybrid of tea kettle and pressure cooker whistles while some snores made me wonder whether they were coming from the right aperture. I had to rely on my nostrils in order to confirm the origin of those snores!! The man would all of a sudden turn towards me and say something in telugu (I assumed). Now I have had experience of Telugu men speaking in their beloved mother tongue in the middle of the night so I ignored assuming the person was sleeping.

I then shifted my attention to the couple sitting in front. They had pulled off the shawl as soon as I had turned off the reading light. The husband appeared to be doing some head banging or probably there was a loose nut in his neck. It was an exaggerated show of how bad the road was and how rash the driver was driving. On venturing closer, I actually found out that he just wanted to get a little cozy with his wife in the dark. Respecting their privacy, I turned around to see what the couple next to me were upto. The guy had given up on his wife, had moved to the last row and spread himself there. I could sympathize with him because his wife was one heck of a loquacious woman.

Finally the bus arrived at the foothills of Tirumala @ 1:30 am. I dived out of the bus, grabbed my room keys and went straight to the room. We were given 1 hour to get bathed and ready and re-assemble @ 2:30 am to move to the hill of Tirumala. Upon entering the room, big fat mosquitoes the size of fully swollen ‘pohas’ {Maharashtrian dish} greeted me. The Kshatriya in me sprang up in action and I started madly punching into thin air. Some of the mosquitoes fell on the floor, mocked me and then flew back again. I thought the religious atmosphere around Tirumala offered the mosquitoes special divine powers and could not be killed. Not to fight against the will of God, I left the mosquitoes alone and headed for the bath.

After a chilling bath in cold water my body hair resembled a porcupine and my face a white ghost. All my 206 bones rattled with fear {and cold} invoking further fear in my 32 pearly whites (pearly creamish white rather) which then started quavering. I feared that the frequencies created by my shivering body might hit the resonance frequency {remember we learnt this in physics} of the hotel building and that the entire building might collapse. In order to avoid such destruction, I jumped into some warm clothes and headed back down.

In the hotel lobby I saw the same cute girl whom I had observed the previous night @ the boarding stop. The pretty lass had started with an occasional stealing of glances at the boarding station to a full blown stare in the hotel lobby; I thought I had come a long way. Unfortunately she wasn’t a lass, but married. Tragedy is such that I always attract the wrong kind of girls and at the wrong places too. Tirupati is not a place where you go to date girls, I guess!!!

The journey in a local bus to top of Tirumala is extremely exciting. The bus drivers drive as if a hot iron rod is up theirs with total dis-regard for the passengers sitting in the bus. There are endless hairpins and S-curves to make us shuffle in our seats. I was sitting in the aisle side of a three seater. As the bus twisted and turned, the man next to me made no effort to hold on to the handle bar and put his entire weight on me when the bus turned left. I sensed competition from this act and did the same to him when the bus turned right. Un-fortunately there seemed to be more lefts than rights and the man won Round 1. With a mean look in my eyes I made a mental note to settle my score with him while descending. Unlucky me … he realized what I was upto and was not to be seen again during the entire Tirupati darshan and the eventual descent.

I finished my darshan in 45 mins and the exact moment of 5:30 am on 07-Feb-2010 I became sin free. {I have started a new sin account since then!} I have asked for something again from Balaji and once that is done, I will visit again {and will write another story}

After the descent, we had breakfast followed by darshan of Padmavati and then sped off to Bangalore. The return journey was spent entirely in Naga mode as I was in no mood to hear my neighbors snores, neither see couples getting cozy (or horny) nor was I in the mood to understand the dynamics of the Volvo bus.

I reached Bengaluru @ 5:30 pm on 07-Feb-2010, thus closing another travelogue.


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