The omnipresent

It’s 4 am when we get off the bus. It drops us outside the choultry – inexpensive hostel-like accommodation for visitors. It’s not the sort of place you’ll see advertised in brochures for a weekend getaway. This is basic accommodation – hundreds of small rooms housed in a few massive buildings.

The place is buzzing with activity even at this time. We’re atop a hill and it is cold. Night watchmen from a few of the buildings are huddled around a fire that they’ve built out in the open with newspapers, twigs and other rubbish. Some beggars stand close by. We’re in Thirupathi, the world’s richest and most-visited place of worship. There’s free food everyday and a steady stream of visitors in their most benevolent frame of mind.

Large groups of people are already leaving the choultry. They’ve bathed, donned new clothes and are now walking hurriedly towards the temple. Seeing them hurry immediately shakes us out of the dozy state the bus ride has put us in. The race is now on for us too. For the rest of the day we will tear through mammoth crowds in our quest to visit the temple.
We rush to our room and hurry through morning ablutions. The taps only have cold water and I go to one of the night watchmen to have my bucket filled with hot water. Anywhere between a hundred and five hundred thousand people will visit the temple today. There are queues or crowds every step of the way. Want to get a room in the choultry? Want hot water? How about some hot tea from the vendor with the tiny cart outside the choultry? Wait your turn. After all, aren’t faith and patience the two keys to salvation?

In an hour, we start our push towards the temple. It is about a kilometer away and we walk like everyone else does. As we near the temple, we’re greeted by loud repetitive devotional music that seems to fill the whole town. The streets are lined with tiny stores selling both mundane and divine things – flowers, paintings of various Hindu Gods, film for your camera. There is very little product differentiation here. Every shop is like every other. You let your intuition and the store-owner’s good fortune guide you to a given store.

Very soon we are right outside the temple. The proximity is deceptive. This is where the journey begins. Now long, almost interminable queues start. We go to a ticket window where you can pay differing amounts of money to cut in line at different places. We then follow the signs to where our tickets will let us go. If you’ve accumulated enough good karma since your last visit you may get to see the diety in two hours, but four to five hours is normal. I follow the rest of our group feeling guilty when thinking about the thousands who we’re passing because they can’t afford these tickets.

You may not remember much about the temple or the diety at Thirupathi, but you’ll never forget its lines. They start inside some building constructed to house these lines. Different sections of the lines have different personalities. The initial parts are hurried. The temple authorities have of course planned for peak traffic. Today is not one of those days, so everyone runs through the enclosures to get as far ahead as they can till they reach the sea of devotees lining up ahead. Inside the building the lines seem quite comfortable. There are benches along the way, restrooms, drinking water and even television sets even though we cannot stop to partake of any of these things. We forge ahead.

My personal space ends where my body does. Beyond that someone else’s body may begin. This is especially true at junctions where lines of different ticket holders are merged. All hell breaks loose at such points and everyone tries to stay ahead of people merging in from the other lines. After a few hours of standing in line I develop a heightened sense of fairness. I make it my solemn duty to ensure that no person who deserves to be behind me get’s ahead. I often fail but keep trying with mounting indignation.

After some time, our line takes us outside in the space between the building where we started and the actual temple. The lines will now snake around the temple many times. We have a wall on one side, a tin roof above and metal bars on the other side. I get claustrophobic. I can see free people walking outside the enclosure. These are visitors who have finished their visit, or hawkers trying to sell us water, fruits and toys to keep us occupied. I pity a few parents whose children are giving them a hard time. But mostly, I’m tired and determined to keep our group moving as fast as it can.

After three hours, we finally make it inside. It is an ancient temple, many centuries old. The central part has the ambience of a tiny cave with some modern building material slapped on it. The heart of the temple is about the size of our living room and is dimly lit. Now the crowd’s excitement has reached a fever pitch and everyone’s pushing the person ahead. The line gets right up before the diety then makes a U turn and leads everyone out. Even before we get to the very front of the line, temple employees start goading us onwards. No stopping at the head of the line. Jaragandi! Jaragandi! I don’t know the language but don’t need to. They want the line to keep moving. An enterprising man ahead slips some bills into the hands of one of the employees. His group is taken aside and gets to spend an extra thirty seconds inside. Others are herded on, Jaragandi! As we approach the front, I see others getting yelled at loudly and in some cases pushed out. For the remaining few seconds my attention is split between paying obeisance and making sure no one in our group is yelled at or pushed. And then, we’re out in the sun.