A RAY OF HOPE & A WHOLE LOT OF FAITH

Well, they just don’t say, that things happen if they are destined to happen. Faith is what takes you over the line, and courage is what helps you get there, even though all odds seem to be against you and all roads leading to a dead end.

We started off the trip to tirumala with neither accommodation nor any darshan tickets, just having the hope things would work out because we had a few friends among us whose uncles and dads had very high reaches in the political realm. When we reached tirupati, we were a whole lot happy to see our friend who had come over from Chennai, indeed this happiness meant a lot, because without him a lot of what was to happen wouldn’t have been as beautiful as it was. The queue at the bus stand for darshan tickets had us overwhelmed, but there were alternate venues for them, and we decided to visit the others. All of them left us disappointed, and that was when we decided we would head up-hill and then see what could be done. Well, when would friends come in handy if not now?

The guy who was to arrange the things for us had an unfortunate incident, which prevented him from making the trip, and so with him not with us now, chances of things working out smoothly were a lot lesser. We called him up once we reached the top, and he made a few calls and voila, things starting to run fine, and before we knew it we had a room allotted to us. Wow, A nice start to the trip! We all were glad to have got our asses to rest and answer nature’s call, and in the meanwhile cells were ringing around trying to get darshan tickets for the same day, as we had our return journeys booked for that day night. As the turn of events were to go, everything didn’t seem to be running smoothly any longer. The absence of our friend started showing its effect, and now we were screwed out of getting darshan tickets. We were not going to get them so easily now. After a little discussion, we decided we would take the long way and go for free darshan. But, the crowd had spawned in a lot earlier than us and that way it would take us more than 8 hours before we could have a glimpse of the allmighty. Too long!

This was when our friend from Chennai spoke up and said he could try and do something. We were all ready to give it a try, before we took the deep plunge, so here were our hopes rejuvenating and we had by then put in all our faith on the almighty himself. We said to ourselves, “if it is his wish to have us in his abode, nothing can make it not happen”. The first call to his father was pretty unexciting, and we were just considering it a wild arrow, taking all the chances before giving up. But, then in a few minutes, everything started looking bright again. His father directed us to another friend of his, who had some really neat contacts at high places. And within a few minutes we found ourselves talking to the DSP. We were at awe, unable to believe the things happening around us, and within the next 20 minutes, we were in direct conversation with a policeman, who brought us our tickets for a VIP darshan. We completed our darshan and were blessed to be in the divine presence of lord Venkateswara withing an hour and a half. The whole run went so fine, we were very satisfied, our eyes wet with happiness as we walked past the radiant idol with clasped hands and mantras in our hearts.

We had started off with utterly nothing at 6 in the morning, and now by 2 in the afternoon, we had one of the greatest darshans of our lives, and were out of the temple on the way to collect the scintillating laddoos, the prashaad of lord Venkateshwara. Nothing else was on our minds then, apart from the happiness of the turn of the events and the ecstasy of having had such a wonderful darshan. On the way back to our cottages, thoughts flowed spontaneously and as we reflected upon the whole day’s happenings, where we had started without having anything, to getting a room and then starting off to take a long free darshan, and one phone call, to try our luck, changing everything within a matter of minutes, it indeed shows what I started off talking about...the divine grace would play its strongest hand upon you only if you had the utmost faith in it, and the courage to hope for the best to happen even in the gravest of situations, because of your faith in God.