Visiting Lord Venkateswara

I had only once earlier been to Tirupati / Thirumala (when I was a small kid)! I didn’t have any memory of that trip and so this was like the first time for me and boy, the opulence in the temple was just unbelievable! The sheer enormity of the place was striking, the crowd, the history of the temple, the hundreds of thousands of devotees who throng the temple each day; all this had to be seen to be believed!

We had booked the APTDC Tirupati package(transportation to and from Tirupati / Thirumala, Darshan tickets and visit to main temple, hotel stay for the few hours, visit to Kala Hasti, visit to Sri Padmavathi Devi temple)!

We started off from TNagar at 6.15 PM and reached Tirupati at 12:00 AM (delayed after a bus break down which provoked the passengers to curse and swear like there was no tomorrow!).

We were allowed a measly 2 hours of sleep before being whisked away to the temple and from 3 AM to 5.30 AM we were just in the queues, the elaborate paths that has been setup to control the crowds is extremely annoying but is unbelievable in the way they have planned and set it up.

I had never been this long in the queue, that too at 3 in the morning, it was a bit too much and eventually when we reached the deity, it was just mayhem!

The devotees went berserk! It was like suddenly everybody went mad, people start pushing each other, stepping over other peoples legs, crushing people literally and while all this is happening, the temple staff are trying their bit, by pulling people out of the madness, all this was a little too much for me. I stopped moving after the initial mayhem, , the crowd, literally swept me off my feet and took me in front of the deity.

Boy, those few seconds, those few seconds one gets to watch Sri Venkateswara, is worth all the pain one takes to reach till there! You are not allowed to stand there in front of the deity for more than a few seconds, if you try to then you will definitely have an aching arm, the temple staff just pull you out of there, such is the pressure with which they pull at you that if you resist your arm might come off! I didn’t take the risk though, within those few seconds, I had a one sided conversation with the Lord Almighty! However once I was out, I remembered that I had forgotten to discuss a couple of things!

Was feeling bad about that but we then were headed to Sri Padmavathi Devi temple, so the rest of the conversation happened at that temple!

As per history, when Sri Lakshmi Devi came to know of Lord Vishnu's marriage to Sri Padmavathi Devi, she was in consoleable and eventually Lord Vishnu had to shift Sri Padmavathi's place to a different location to console her. That's why Sri Padmavathi Devi has a separate temple, whereas Sri Lakshmi Devi is borne by Sri Venkateswara on his chest in the main temple. (Well, bought a pictorial book about Tirupati outside the temple, got some gyan from that book about Tiruapati and this info is from that book!)

Then we started our journey back and reached home at 5.00 PM. In short it was a very tiring schedule but what I got to see compensated for the pain that I had to undergo in the journey.

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Contact info for booking tickets

A.P. Tourism (http://www.tourisminap.com/tirupati.htm#)

Address: 1Soundararajan Street, T. Nagar, Chennai600017
Phone: (44) 24333010, 24331977