"OM NAMO NARAYANAYA" is the only hymn everyone listens to in any part of Tirupati.
Tirupati Tirumala temple is the biggest and most famous temple in India,
surrounded by thick forests and seven hills and needs no introduction. Sastras
and Puranas indicate that Mukti in Kaliyuga can be attained only by worshiping
Sri Srinivasa.
Most of the pilgrims visit the
temple by walking the seven hills that represent the seven hoods of Adi sesha.
The seventh peak is the temple of seven hills.
I am extremely interested in reading
about historical places of worship. This place has always fascinated me. While
reading about the history of this temple, I stumble upon the auspicious day of
Tirumala Vaikunta Ekadashi. Since then I always wanted to visit Tirumala on
this auspicious day.
The most important ritual on the
Vaikunta Ekadashi day is witnessing the opening of the door in the inner
sanctum of the temple which is known as Vaikunta Dwaram or Swargada Bagilu (the
gate to heaven). The name Vaikunta Dwaram indicates the door to Vaikunta -
abode of Srihari Vishnu. This door is opened only on Vaikunta Ekadashi day and
devotees are allowed to walk through the door which I happily did. I got to
witness the most important event of the temple.
From Bangalore, my friend and I
travelled to Tirupati by train. We reached Tirupati at 3 p.m. and decided
to take the TTD-bus from the railway station to reach the Tirumala hill. After
a 45 minutes ride in the bus, we were in the seventh hill.
From the bus station, we decided to
walk to the CRF office to reserve a room to keep our belongings. The rooms are
provided to devotees by the temple authorities for a period of one day. After
waiting for two hours in the queue at the CRF office, we finally got a spacious
and clean room at Ram Bageecha Block-1 which is located in front of the
temple.
After the room registration, both of
us walked happily towards our room. By the time, we reached our room it was
already 7 p.m. We took the opportunity to freshen up and take some needed rest
before queuing up for the Vaikunta Ekadashi day.
On the Vaikunta Ekadashi day, there is
no special darshana. Everyone has to go through the free darshana. We joined
the free darshana queue at about 10 p.m. at Vaikunta Queue Complex-2.
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| Pushkarini scared pond next to temple! |
There were lots of devotees sleeping
in the Balcony. The experienced devotees had already spread out their sheets of
cloth and were sleeping on the floor in the open-area. I came to know from the
devotees and the security personnel that the queue will start moving only after
9 a.m. the next day. I was heartbroken.
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| Gallery that we were sleeping in. |
We decided to sleep under open sky.
To sleep under the open sky surrounded by seven hills in Tirumala is a blissful
experience. In spite of wearing extra clothes to keep us warm, by 1 a.m. the
weather became very cold and we were freezing sleeping on the floor. We gave up
and decided to walk back to our room to keep our self warm and get some sleep.
However, I was not able to sleep
because my desire to witness the Vaikunta Dwaram kept me awake. After taking
some rest in the room, I came back mentally and physically prepared to stand in
the queue for 24 hours.
At about 3 in the morning, I took a thick
heavy blanket and my travel pillow and head back to the queue complex to join
the queue. However, the security personnel did not allow us to join the queue
at the same place where we were standing in earlier. So, we joined the queue at
the back which was 0.5 km behind from where we were initially as the crowd had
increased in the meantime. I was thinking how to get back to our original position
in the queue. We finally decided to jump the barricade and metal grills to
reach our original position in the queue. I wish I could seize that moment and
live it over and over again.
The next day at 8 a.m., the
crowd was huge and a few people in the crowd started fainting. Witnessing the
Vaikunta Dwara is definitely not for the faint hearted ones. After three hours
of jostling, jumping the metal grills, and pushing, we finally passed through
the security gate and were directed in to a big CAGE. They call it a HALL.
Camera, Mobile Phones, and Electronic Items are not allowed inside the HALL. Therefore,
I have no pictures to show what the HALL looked like.
It was 12 in the noon by the time we
reached the waiting hall. There were 40 such waiting halls. Each of the waiting
halls can accommodate nearly 400 devotees. There was a huge TV screen showing live
activities in the inner sanctum of the temple. Some privileged neta was
performing pooja and the priests were chanting shlokas in the local language.
While waiting in the hall, there was another queue system to collect coupons
for the 'laddus'.
At 6 p.m. in the evening, the
whistles started blowing indicating that the TTD authorities are going to open
the door of our waiting hall. It became clear that we will be taken for
darshana. All devotees including us, who had been waiting in the hall, started
to push each other and chanting 'Govinda' while exiting the waiting hall.
I
was holding the heavy blanket and pillow while jostling through the crowd.
Luckily, I found a bag counter on our way to darshana to keep our belongings.
The security staffs at the bag counter refused to take my bag at the beginning.
Somehow I was able to convince them to accept my bag. After leaving the bag at the bag counter, I was relieved of
the heavy burden and I could walk freely and peacefully in the crowd.
We passed through a maze of queues
for two and half hours. Finally, we reached the main temple around 8.30 p.m.
The queue at the main temple was moving forward slowly with few stops by the
security staff. We simply “floated” to the main temple with the help of pushes
from the devotees.
My feeling after witnessing the
Vaikunta Dwara was that this indeed is a gateway to the heaven. Our darshana
part was over in less than a minute after waiting in the queue for 24 hours.
The painful long wait and hurdles that we experienced just faded away when we saw
Srihari Vishnu. This was one of the most auspicious days of my life.
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| Picture source- Google. This is how the temple entrance looked like. |
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| Picture source-Google. Temple Entrance. |
The entire darshana ritual ended at
9.30 p.m. After the darshana ended, we decided to collect the world famous
laddus and our bag from the counter. I realized that I did not collect a receipt
from the bag counter when I dropped my bag. So, both of us were confused and did
not know where to collect the bag from.
We talked to the TTD staff and
explained them where exactly we dropped our bag earlier. Unfortunately, the TTD
staff had no clue where the “Foot Path Scanner-1” is. They showed us a few bag
counters but it was not the bag counter where we dropped off the bag. The TTD
staff asked us for the receipt unfortunately we did not have.
We lost all our hopes of getting our
bags. As a last resort, I approached Police officials for help. One of the
police officials was very helpful and he took us to all possible bag counters.
After an hour and a half of searching and explaining to the TTD staff about the
location where we dropped off the bag, one staff member understood the location
and pointed us to the right bag counter.
I am thankful to TTD staff and the
Policeman who was with us throughout our bag search. We got lucky to find our
bag at the bag counter. We both had a warm smile on our face. We feel
blessed. It was already 11.30 in the night by the time we got our bag.
We had to rush to go buy laddus as the
laddu counter closes at 12 in the night and we had to leave our room next day early
morning. So, we had to buy laddus before the counter closes at 12 a.m. Both of
us were running to the laddu counter and luckily the Policeman, who helped us
to find our bag, also helped us to get the laddus. We thanked the Policeman from
the bottom of our heart.
We had a big smile when we reached our
room. We freshened up and went in search of a restaurant for dinner. After
dinner, we come back to our room to get the badly needed rest. We slept like a
baby that night.
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| This is how i looked when we reached our room! |
Next day we woke up early in the morning to
catch a bus to come down from the hill to the reach railway station. We spotted
a few deers on the way down and I was thrilled to see the deers.
The trip to Tirumala participating
in the Vaikunta Ekadashi event is indeed once in a lifetime experience. It is
worth the 24 hour wait in the queue, freezing sleepless night, and a hectic day
to witness Sri Venkatesha on Vaikunta Ekadashi day. I felt enlightened and more religious. My belief in 'Sri Venkatesha' became all the more stronger. I will always cherish this divine experience for the rest of my life.
Thanks for reading!
Footnote- I give the credit to the TTD
(Tirupati-Tirumala-Devasthanams) management for the efforts of maintaining
order and provide as much facilities to the devotees at the temple.
In the waiting hall, huge
ventilation systems were working efficiently. I never felt congested or smelly.
Toilets were clean and dry (a big surprise!). Volunteers and security staff
were polite and courteous.
The problem is with the devotees.
Every devotee wanted to move ahead of each other. There is no shame in pushing
others to go ahead in the crowd since this is a big event. Few of the male
devotees may take advantage of the females. So be prepared to confront them and
give them ten times back.
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| In the Train! |
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| View while we traveling back to Bangalore from Tirupathi! |
