I had been on a trip to Temples of South India for the past five days and that’s the reason I Have not been able post as much as I would have liked.
Once in about three or four months I get the itch to travel and I prefer temples of India.
While embarking on visit to temples,I wold not call them Pilgrimage for Pilgrimage is a conscious decision to visit places and com plete the vows.
I do not ask for or pray for anything, for I am convinced long back God knows what I deserve and what ever I get is for my Good,
I visit the Temples for the sheer joy it gives me.
I have learnt couple of lessons in visiting temples.
The first is never set a time frame for Darshan.
About 23 years back, i went to Tirupati with my nephew with my seven-year Daughter.
My nephew, who is three years younger to me, declared that we would be back in 10 hours at Chennai,six hours for Car travel, two hours for Darshan of Lord Balaji and two hours Margin!
I told him not to set time frame for God for He sets the Time for us.
We went ahead and had a special pass at Rs 150 which entitled on to have Darshan in a Special queue.
Once we entered the inner queue with iron railings from where you can not come out,, we had to wait for 17 hours to have the Darshan!
During this period I had to feed my daughter who refused to come down from my Hip and organise for natural ablutions!
Well, that was that.
From that day I never fix a tome frame to have a Darshan.
I have been visiting temples since then.
When I visit this way, I never had to wait for Darshan and there would be practically be no crowd at all.
Then I refined this approach, by not even listing the temples i want to visit, excepting a couple of Temples.
For the rest I go as my mind tells me.
I got better results.
Later I decided not to use private transport of any special entrance facilities offered at the temple for a quick darshan.
The experience was still better.
This time I had thought of visiting Tirukkadayur(Thirukkakkdavur is the correct pronunciation) and a vow I had to complete for the natural delivery for my Daughter in law(she delivered a baby girl seven months back) at Thayumanavar temple at Tiruchi.
Excepting these two I had absolutely no plans.
I ended up with visiting 20 temples in five days with no Private transport, traveling by only by Public transport.
And the Temples were chosen for me by the others!
At Mayiladuthurai, This job was handled by my friend’s(friend since college days since 1967) wife and at Tiruchirapalli by my friend’s daughter who is Computer Professional aged 25!
Believe me not only the visits were better, smoother and the Darshan, the best in my life.
For these people who had done this without any anticipation, six letters of the word Thanks is not enough.
Thank you Ms. Abhayamba Sekaran and Sindhu.
May Goddess Abhirami Bless you.
This trip also reinforced my belief, which I have expressed often , that the present generation of youngsters, obsessed with worldly things and Gadgets are more informed , more helpful and more Religious without pretenses.
To conclude I can only say that Faith is what Faith does.
Note. I will be posting some articles on the Temples I visited with some unique information and Photos.
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