God Almighty - Part II

Faith has no limits.

To see people, who are physically incapable of walking, climb 3690 steps of sheer mountain to reach a temple on the other side is a humbling experience. To see people applying turmeric & BINDI to each and every step they climb, while you climb panting away, makes you forget the effort that you are putting in. Seeing small children walking along with their parents to see their favourite god kind of puts things in perspective.

I am talking about Lord Venkateshwara who resides at Tirumala, seven mountains away from Tirupati. Tirupati is a small town based at the foothills of the mountain range that provides inspiration to millions of people. Tirupati is where one starts his journey to meet the lord.

The first 2087 steps are the most daunting of them all. Enough to test your faith. It is a climb of almost 60 degrees for almost three kilometers. And this is where you see most of the faith. You see people from all walks of life walking up there for their time with god.

The legend, I am told, goes like this: The Lord had two wives who were constantly bickering at each other. The Lord, one day, got furious at this & left. He took seven steps, which turned into mountains, and on the seventh, he stayed there & turned into stone himself.

The eleven kilometer walk only gets you to Tirumala, the town atop the mountain which is The Lord's resting place. From here, getting to actually see The Lord is another thing. Just to put things in perspective, there are more than a hundred thousand people who come to see The Lord...EVERYDAY! Some wait for more than a day to catch a glimpse of the deity.

We had our "darshan" (literally meaning "sighting" in the local lingo) scheduled for 4am. By the time we waited in the really long queue for our time, it was close to 6.

As I approach the inner sanctum, I can see the deity in His full glory from afar. And my head automatically bows in reverence. I say my quiet prayers while moving toward The Lord. And when I am finally there, inside the sanctum sanctorium, I am completely blank. Not a thought, not anything. No consciousness of the thousands of people joustling for a view, nor the helpers trying to keep people from holding the crowd up, not anything. Just a calm, serene feeling which The Lord inspires.

And after about 30 seconds, my darshan is over. I follow the crowd into the outer sanctum, still in a state of complete calm. And I realise, millions of people go through a lot of struggle for this glimpse at their God. And the deity inspires them to things which would otherwise be considered humanly impossible.

And yet, millions of people come from all over the world for a darshan. And no one complains about the little time that they had with The Lord. Everyone talks about the next time they will go to see The Lord.

Faith has no end, not boundaries. And it is places like there where I realise that my troubles are not as bad as I thought. That there is much more to life. That there is something bigger & brighter than anything you can see. And all this while, you always had it inside of you.