Govinda Govinda...

Wow, finally(lly)... we made the Tirupati trip, its almost been 4 years(5 years for me) at Chennai and only now we could manage to do it. A darshan at Vaikundam , great and i never knew that Vaikundam is actually Tirupati and that Lord Krishna also faced death and died(yes not much related but i didn't know that he died). It was Mummy's b'day on 24th and my grandmom's(mummy's mummy :) ) on 25th and so right after my exam on 24th evening we left for the holy place. Mummy arranged for the tickets and stay through her colleague, so that we don't struggle much on our first visit to Tirupati.  So that was the gift for mummy, the trip to Tirupati and yes yet another gift was there but its not yet a confirmed one and thats from Pappa.

Being at Chennai for nearly 4 years, we were often made to issue a veto for the question "So, did you visit Tirupati?" by all our relatives and friends. And now we can proudly say, "Yeah, of course staying at Chennai it is hard to miss Tirupati, a great temple and the place is also equally beautiful, it was a memorable trip. Make sure you visit it someday". Yeah, a long reply for the small question but it just makes up for all the short answers till date. So let me just give you a gist of my(our) experience at Tirupati. 

** The first and foremost thing is that Pappa wants to quit smoking, the tradition says that we are suppose to leave something at  Tirupati  and we have left back that habit of his. I don't know whether it would get back to him, yes Tirupati  is just 160 km from here and a storm can easily bring the habit back, but he seems to be confident this time. He is a desperate dad (and husband) who wants to make his family happier and for the first time i find some sincerity in his pledge. Lets see. I wouldn't complain if he smokes again, but i want him to reduce the number of cigarettes significantly. 

**I never expected Tirupati to be such a humongous place, and it was such a nice and very well maintained town. The weather was a bit shivery, and early morning wait in the queue did make me shiver a bit. We had to wait for some 2 and a half hours to get the darshan, but by Tirupati standards that is a lot earlier, there has been times when devotees waited for more than a day it seems, lucky you Rahul( and family). But we had a big struggle with the language, though there are a handful of people who speak tamil, it is difficult. So i have decided to dedicate some time to watch Telugu movies(any recommendations???) to improve my language.

**The drive was also a nice one, on the Onward journey i did most of the driving with Pappa sitting behind and yelling at me for careless driving(i wasn't really careless, but he gets tensed fast especially when i drive. Yeah, just like your dad, all dads are like this is it???). I have improved my driving considerably, my dad is happy(but he doesn't even show a sign of that, last time he told mummy that am a good driver, but didn't agree when i asked him that, yes mummy never keeps secrets). 

**One of the best things was that, the road to and from the temple(its situated in a hill) is one-way and we don't even get to locate the other road when we are going in one. It must have taken them some great planning to do it. Hats of to the architects, and the return journey(i mean the road) is a lot shorter than the other one. And the places at Tirupati had a historical significance, its a very nice place to be on a vacation.

**The crowd at the temple, i was pushed like anything when i just entered the main temple, the devotees behind me were pushing me and added to that were the temple staffs(staffs who are assigned to push the devotees, what an idea Govinda?) they were also busy pushing everyone but that's part of their work to moderate the crowd(i suppose). I still managed to have a good darshan but this entire pushing saga made me unknowingly step on a little girl(poor girl), i told her sorry and smiled at her, the innocent child smiled back. I was really unhappy with the way they moderate the crowd, and the issuing of tickets on the basis of the money paid by the devotees, i never support that idea. Mummy did manage to get us the tickets through one of her colleagues.And yes, i got the ladoo. 

**The most pathetic things was that, only 4 of us were there but we ended up buying 5 tickets thinking an aunt of ours would also be there but she couldn't make it. Every ticket actually cost 200 Rs., there should be more expensive tickets as well i guess. And we had to pay the person who got us the ticket(Mummy's colleagues cousin) 5oo Rs. per ticket, that meant an additional 300 and we weren't really happy for that. But we couldn't bargain either and we told ourselves "Tirupati is a place like that, the God here will make us pay for him" and walked back.

**We went to Tirupati on 24th of November and this post has been in my drafts for nearly 2 months, just today when i was editing that section i noticed it and just when i thought of deleting the post i found that most of the work is complete and thought i would flag it. If you haven't been to Tirupati do go there irrespective of caste and creed(i don't believe in both). It should be a nice experience and you can see an entire town developing just because of its temple and the crowd out there should surprise you.

And finally "Ezhukundalavacha Venkataramana Govinda Govinda"...