Dreams

There are two kinds of Dreams. The first one is the kind that one has during day time, when one is fully awake and conscious; the kind that our former People’s President of India Abdul Kalam extolled the younger generation to have. His advice that unless you have dreams about your future you cannot achieve anything in life, is so very true.

The more ambitious your Dream, and the more challenging, certainly makes life more interesting. Relentless pursuit of one`s dreams will certainly help achieve success in life. As was proved by that people’s businessman; industrialist (Late)Dhrubhai Ambani, of Reliance fame. A man with humble beginnings, he went on to build one of the biggest industrial empires in the country. What Tatas & Birlas took a century to build, he did it in 25 years. It is another matter that he fully exploited the loopholes in our system and the avarice and greed of the `Babus` who run the country. The fact is that he had big dreams and he realized them in his lifetime! No wonder you will find signboards carrying the slogan, “If you can dream it, you can make it” in every corner and in every establishment his group owns.

For the second kind of dream (Zzz..); you have to be fast asleep; and you have no control over what dreams you are likely to get. The kind most of us have almost every night and forget the next morning!

I have regular dreams; some of them pleasant where my fantasies come true. But many of them, which keep recurring, are bizarre! Like the times I find myself flying in the sky, looking down at the earth below like a bird. It is said that, when a person dies, his soul hovers over the body for some time, seeing all that is happening around! I am also told that many of our Yogis achieved this status when they were deep in meditation. Whatever it is, I am happy that I am still alive and kicking in spite of the ‘flying’ experiences in my dreams!

Another dream which keeps recurring is the one where I am walking on the road and suddenly find myself without any dress- almost in my birthday suit! Everybody is staring and laughing at me. And I am running away from the crowd with both my hands trying to cover myself!!

The latest dream which has been haunting me repeatedly during the last couple of months goes like this. I am abroad visiting a new country or a new place and suddenly discover that my tickets and passport are missing. I am desperately running from pillar to post trying to locate them.

I don’t know what to make out of such dreams.

There are occasions when I am woken up by my wife asking me why I was howling in my sleep. Invariably it would be a bad dream- either a beast chasing me or somebody trying to attack me- what a relief to realize that it is after all just a dream.

I think I got the dream bug from my mother. Almost every day she would have some dream, which she would then describe vividly, to anyone who cared to listen. If the dream came to her early in the morning and if it was a bad dream, she would be tense the whole day. There was a belief among the older generation that the dreams you have early in the morning, will come true! She had many such theories for both good and bad dreams.

In her last days, when she was bedridden, she had a recurrent dream of a burglar entering the bedroom when she was asleep. Hearing her screams, we would rush to her, to find her awake and sweating with fear. She would complain that a burgler had entered the room through the window and was trying to kill her! We would laugh it off and reassure her that no burglar can ever enter the room through the window. Satisfied that it was just a dream she would go back to sleep.

But it is strange that years after she passed away, a burglar did enter our house on a Sunday morning through a window in the drawing room, by carefully removing the grill!

After all my mother’s early morning dream did come true!

The Family Doctor

As a boy growing up in the chawls of Bombay, when anyone in the family suffered from a health problem, be it the common cold, fever, cough or minor cuts / burns, the first person to be consulted was the family Doctor – the General Practitioner or GP as he was well known in the medical world then. Such GPs with an MBBS degree and an additional FRCS qualification were found on every street of Matunga, where we lived.

Most of the GP’s landed up converting one of the rooms in their residence into a clinic, with an attached dispensary manned by the ubiquitous Compounder; a breed which has completely vanished today. The doctor would sit behind a table and a long bench adjacent to him was used for the physical examination!

Every time, the patient`s weight would be checked; temperature, BP readings taken and the lungs or heart examined with the stethoscope. Invariably every patient would be asked to open the mouth (say aah!) and put his tongue out so that the doctor could check for tonsillitis or other throat infections. If it was a stomach problem, he would ask the patient to lie on the bench and physically inspect the stomach by pressing the different sections to identify the exact location of the pain or any growth. Then he would pull out a pad and write a prescription and ask you to collect the medicine from the Compounder, whose job was to `dispense` the medicines prescribed by the Doctor.

This guy would take your prescription and vanish behind a partition in the dispensary. He would come back with a standard vertical rectangle shaped bottle containing a `Mixture` (a combination of medicines in liquid form) and a brown envelope containing certain no. of paper packets with either tablets or medicines in powdered form. The bottle would have the dosage indication on a paper label pasted to one side. The label would indicate the quantity of each dosage and the number of doses in the bottle. Very rarely would the doctor recommend branded medicines back in those days!

The patient not only had to wait patiently in the queue for a consultation with the doctor but also wait for the compounder to deliver the medicines. I wonder if the word ‘patient’ was coined by some bright guy, waiting patiently at one such clinic!

If the problem was serious, then the GP would invariably refer him/her to a hospital – private or public for further investigation and treatment by specialists who were available only in the hospitals. Unlike now, where we find specialists for every part of the body, in every street corner in all the cities and towns!!

Apart from the more common Cardiologist, Oncologist, Orthopedic, Nephrologist or even Dentist; we have today under Orthopedics doctors who specialize in specific limbs of the body! A dentist who only does extraction of teeth (Pal Pidungi as he is called in Tamil), while somebody else who is a specialist in root canal treatment.

The danger of going to a specialist directly is that you will be forced to undergo several tests (many of them totally unrelated to the problem under investigation). The specialist gets his cut from the laboratory or the Diagnosis Centre, to whom he refers the patients for tests. Such specialists refuse to accept reports from any other diagnostic centre . Ofcourse, there are good and honest specialists with impeccable reputations but they are exceptions!

An even greater danger awaits an otherwise normal patient who goes for a routine check up to a five star hospital. The check up invariably unearths one or two blocks in the heart and the patient will be offered a package deal; which includes a By-Pass surgery at a concessional rate and also a five star comfortable stay in the hospital for the patient and his attendee. Depending on the availability of rooms the patient will be detained for a few weeks or dispatched home within a couple of days. The poor patient will not be given a choice by the family who would have been already blackmailed by the cardiologist that if the patient walks out of the hospital without undergoing the surgery, he is likely to drop dead at the door step!

My advice to anyone who is willing to listen – please have a family doctor – a GP who attends to all the routine complaints and knows the health history of every member of the family. Even a specialist in your area can become your family doctor. Like my family doctor is a Diabetologist but looks after several families in the area and is available on call whenever a patient urgently needs him. Only if he suggests go for further investigation or consult a specialist referred to. Chances of your getting ripped off by a specialist, when you carry a reference letter from your family doctor are much less than when you go directly. It is another matter if your family doctor is the greedy type, in which case only God can help you!

But even God cannot help those patients who try to get more insight into their problems by `Googling` their specific complaint. They will invariably find that their specific problem could be the indication of some bigger problem connected with anyone or more parts of the body. Armed with the knowledge, the enlightened patient tries to directly consult every possible specialist related to the problem!

Well, you can`t complain against the present medical system, if today`s enlightened patients willingly submit themselves to the exploitation by specialists!


Author can be contacted on: rvrajan42@rediffmail.com

Divine Grace and Blessings

Divine Grace (Anugraham) & “Elders” Blessings (Aashirvadham) are two values which my parents taught me early in life.

My mother was a very pious woman, who celebrated every religious occasion with reverence and great devotion, with appropriate Poojas performed at home. Whether it was a simple `Kardia Nonbu` or the more elaborate ` Varalakshmi Vratham`, she would spare no pain to make the occasion an opportunity to appease her chosen God / Goddess.

While her favourite Lord was Rama of the Ramayana fame, my father always claimed that Guruvayurappan – little Krishna of Guruvayur in Kerala, was his chosen deity whose name he kept invoking whenever he felt happy or depressed. Like millions in the world, both my parents also believed that whatever be their problem, the Lord will always provide a solution!

They also believed in openly expressing their respects to elders. Any elderly person visiting our home was showered with genuine hospitality and made to feel like a VIP. No one left the home without taking the simple meal my mother served, with lots of love! Invariably before the elders took leave, my parents would prostrate before them seeking their blessings! The visiting elders more than touched by the gesture, would be generous in their blessings. Whenever we went on a visit to South on holiday, my parents would make it a point to visit all the elders in the family seeking their blessings.

As for me Lord Balaji of the Tirupathi fame and Vinayaka the elephant God are my chosen deities. Like my parents, I also totally surrender to the Lord not only during hours of crisis but on a daily basis whenever I have the time and opportunity. I am no good at pooja rituals, which are performed by my wife who is proficient in them. My belief is expressed in the form of invoking the Lord`s name, as often as I can, silently.

Keeping elders happy and getting their blessings is also something which I have believed in all my life.
Though old age and physical problems are preventing me from prostrating before the elders I do not fail to touch the feet of the elders in the typical North Indian; `Pai Lagey`style, even now! I feel thrilled when they bless me from the bottom of their hearts! I can say with confidence that my bank balance of
Elders` blessings is always overflowing.

I believe that God’s grace and elders` blessings have played a major part in my leading a fulfilling life apart from my relentless pursuit of my dreams and goals. I have even named my home and company invoking the Divine Grace; ANUGRAH!

Coming to the younger generation, judging by the turnout of youngsters in places of worship and other spiritual get-togethers of modern day `Gurujis` of all shades, I feel that belief in God is certainly growing among the youth of the country.. Whether it is Rama, Krishna, Allah or Christ, every young man has his chosen deity or a `Guruji` whom he regularly invokes for moral support in his hours of trials and tribulations.

I also find the practice of paying respects to elders, by touching their feet is prevalent among all sections of North Indians, wherever they are located,, even today. You can see an ample display of this fine gesture among the younger generations at Railway stations, Airports, other public places and of course at family functions. It might look perfunctory to some but I always admire at the spontaneity with which the act is performed by North Indian youngsters, even in Chennai. Whereas in the South, particularly in Tamilnadu and among Tamilians, the concept of prostrating before elders, the traditional form of paying respects is slowly fading amongst the younger generation. It is especially difficult for the Vada Kalai Iyengars (a sect of Vaishnavites sporting the `U` Namam on the forehead) because they have to perform the act of prostrating- four times, each time they meet an elderly person!

It is quite a punishment, especially for the newly married couple at Weddings, when they are forced to go around the wedding hall prostrating before every elderly person in the crowd. Of course, a wise young man found a solution to this problem by requesting elders to assemble in groups so that he could perform a `one for all` ritual to get their blessings. Saving effort and time!! The idea is catching on even at homes where families get-together on occasions. The fact is today`s younger generation in the South has to be persuaded to pay respects to elders in the traditional way. It is also true that the stresses and strains of modern life have made them physically unfit to perform this arduous form of paying respect!

I suppose that the present day parents and grandparents should feel happy if their children or grandchildren or nephews and nieces express their love and respect in whatever form they choose- if at all they feel like expressing their respects!


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Who is Weird?

In life we come across all kinds of people, good & bad, tall & short, handsome & ugly, grumpy & friendly. The list can go on…but this article is about people who are known for their peculiar or weird habits – which set them apart from the rest!

The first person who comes to mind is my boss of 12 years in the advertising agency where I was working way back then! A very handsome man with an attractive moustache, which he would keep twirling whenever he was in deep thoughts working on a campaign or when he was in a serious discussion with his colleagues.

Since his marriage was on the rocks, living at home, facing his forever nagging wife had become a daily torture. To escape her, he decided to change his office timings. He would walk into the office only around 5 pm, have a brief meeting with his secretary to catch up on the day`s events and work the whole night in the office. He would return home around 8 am next morning by which time his wife would have already left for her office. After catching up on his sleep during the day he would return to the office in the evening. This became his routine.

He would dictate all his letters into a Dictaphone and leave it on his secretary’s table for typing the following day. People used to comment that he had virtually become an owl, active only in the night, probably also because his wife had the hobby of collecting miniatures owls in all forms!

While there was no problem for him with this arrangement it was hell for all his colleagues, who had to follow regular office hours! They could get appointments to meet the boss only after 8 pm. Branch Managers like me, on a visit to the Head Office, got our appointments with him only after midnight. This weird habit cost him both his wife and eventually his job!
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My own father displayed certain peculiarities. He had an obsession for cleanliness – he would wash his hands, his dinner plate and the stainless steel tumbler which was exclusively reserved for him (nobody dare touch it even by mistake!) several times, even though they might have been already cleaned by my mother before he took any meal. He was a gregarious soul, very popular among friends and relatives outside the home, but once he entered the house he would turn into a ‘Rudra Moorthy’ (angry old man) who kept bawling at his wife and children for all that they did or did not do.

He also found a great companion in himself! Whenever alone, whether at home or on a walk; you would find him talking loudly to himself. The moment he became conscious of somebody approaching him, he would stop talking.

He was also well known in the colony where we lived, for his loud sneezing! Every time he sneezed “Haa… Choo!” the whole colony would reverberate with the sound. I know of visiting relatives, who could not locate our house – identifying the same on hearing his sneezing noise!
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Another copywriter colleague of mine (in Chennai) was addicted to drinking, a bottle of `Hewlett Mixture’ daily. This tonic was supposed to be good for ulcers; which he had acquired handling a tension ridden advertising job and dealing with an equally demanding wife at home! A knowledgeable and erudite writer he was also well known for `beating about the bush’ in any discussion.

He would never come straight to a point. If someone asked him for direction to a place, his typical response would be, “you don’t take bus A, but take bus B. don’t get down at ‘C’ stop but get down at ‘D’. After getting down don’t take a left turn but a right turn. When you reach the end of that road, you will find ‘Y’ shop. Ignore it and look for ‘Z’ shop and take a left next to it and enter;…etc. etc`

By the time he finished, the person who had asked for directions would be so frustrated that he would be left wondering why he ever asked the question in the first place. He could be really exasperating!

It does take all kinds of people to make up this world. I wonder what peculiarities I have about which people talk behind my back!

The Intruders

We all have guests visiting us from time to time; Friends, relatives; wanted and unwanted. People who come with appointments, and others who like to give a (little) surprise by landing without prior notice! “I was passing by, so thought I will just drop in” or “I was getting bored at home, so I thought of visiting you”. Such people are not bothered that they may be upsetting your pre-planned programme. However, in the true spirit of Indian hospitality, we welcome all with open arms and make them feel comfortable.

But I am going to talk about the visit of three totally unexpected visitors to our house. Let me elaborate.

* * * * * * * * * *

One day as is her practice, after her morning ablutions my wife was standing before the Puja Room, adjacent to our bedroom, paying obeisance or to put it simply saying good morning to the variety of Gods on display; when she felt something amiss in the puja room. Actually she found a lot of things missing – like the silver lamps – a silver idol of Lord Krishna and few other valuables. She also found the radio-transistor kept on a stand nearby missing!

My first reaction was that some petty thief must have walked into the house, through the front door which is often kept open by my wife during the day, when she is busy in the service verandah at the rear of the house or lost among the hundreds of potted plants she has nurtured around the house.

While we were blaming each other, my wife who was going around the house to find out what else was missing, noticed a whole window grill missing in the study room adjacent to the main hall. A burglar had obviously entered the house through the window! It was a pre-planned burglary the previous night, by some one who knew that our window grills were just screwed to the wooden frame without any extra safety mechanism. What shocked us was the audacity of the burglar who had entered the house when we were there; and what made us shudder was the realization that he could have walked into the adjacent bedroom, which was not locked and relieved us of all the jewellery and other valuables in the house, even probably threatening us at knife point! The Lord in whom I have immense faith obviously saved us from much greater loss! It was as if the Lord told the burglar: “Take whatever you want from this puja room but leave my devotee alone!”

* * * * * * * * * *

On another morning, when my wife was busy reading some prayer books, sitting inside the puja room, she heard a hissing sound and to her horror realised that she had illustrious company inside the puja room. Yes, it was a 3 ft. snake (mildly poisonous Sarai ) curled around one of the dozens of framed pictures on the wall.

A courageous person, she quietly got up and closed the puja room door and called my son for help. She was ready to kill the snake with a broom stick. (The number of creepy-crawly beings she has killed with a broom stick is legendary!).

My son had better ideas, and contacted the local snake park and requested them to send someone to catch the snake which was held captive in the puja room. The whole process took more than two hours but the snake was captured alive and taken in a bag by the snake catcher from the Irula community, who are specialised in this art. Though we had to pay a small price, it was better than our family getting a ` `Sarpa Shabham` (snake curse) if my wife had killed the snake as she had originally intended!

* * * * * * * * * *

The third intruder in my house – hold your breath – was a cow! On a Sunday morning, I was totally immersed in reading the morning newspaper lying on the easy chair in my bedroom. Hearing some commotion followed by screams from my wife, I looked up from the newspaper and realised that a cow’s face was staring at me and saying ‘Hello, I am your special guest this morning!!’

By the time I got up from my chair to handle the uninvited guest, the cow withdrew from the master bedroom and moved to the adjacent guest bedroom. It took a lot of coaxing and gentle pushing to get rid of this special guest.

Investigating the mystery of the ‘cow guest’, I learnt that the young cow ( not a calf nor a fully grown one) had walked into the compound of our independent home through the open gate, with the intention of having a breakfast of the delicious potted plants located all around the house. When my wife, who was busy tending to some plants noticed it and started screaming, the cow ran behind the house, and on finding the door of the service verandah at the rear of the house open, it had entered the house, walked through the kitchen and reached my bedroom to say ‘Hi’ to me!

While all of us at home were intrigued by the special visitor, some elders in the family had this to say: ‘Cow entering the house is very auspicious’. Auspicious or not, we had an interesting story to narrate about our special guest for the next couple of weeks!

Games We Played

The other day my six year old grandson was looking grumpy and irritable. When I asked him what his problem was; he said, “I am bored! Nobody is playing with me”. Even a three year old child today talks of getting bored.

My mind raced back to the time when I was a kid, growing up in a Mumbai chawl with scores of kids of all age groups for company, I never knew the meaning of the word ‘boring’. The moment I returned from school, I would dump my school bag in the house and run out to play with other boys of my age group in the compound area of the building complex where my family was staying.

Even those days Cricket was the most popular game – the underhand variety, with tennis balls and stumps drawn on the walls of the building. It was not uncommon for the aggressive batsman in the group breaking the glass panes on the windows of the flats nearby trying to hit a six! As we grew older and started playing with the seasoned` ball (as the red cricket ball was called), the group had to move to the nearby Matunga Gymkhana Ground opposite to R A Podar College of Commerce where I studied. I remember when I acquired a proper cricket bat and ball; I became a hero among the group! I was always included in our team, playing matches against other teams.

Playing marbles or Gilly-Danda or Top (Pambaram as it is called in Tamil) were other games popular among the boys. For playing marbles, one had to invest a small amount to buy a set of multicolor marbles, contributing to a pool of marbles, and then challenge others for a game. The game involved throwing the collection of marbles a little away from where you stood, and the boys would take turns to hit one specific marble in the spread out. Whoever got the aim right was entitled to keep the entire lot of marbles on the floor. Boys with perfect aim would have multiplied their collection of marbles by the end of the game…several times!

Gilly-Danda involved hitting a small rounded wooden piece (Gilly) with sloping edges on either side with a longer stick (Danda). The knack was to hit the end of the Gilly first to make it rise from the ground and then hit it hard with the Danda to send it flying as far as one could. The experts among the boys would keep hitting the small piece again and again moving forward around the compound of the building with the others running behind them. Those boys who were not able to lift the Gilly from the ground or could not connect it with the Danda after it rose from the ground were declared out from the game.

Playing the Top required special skills. You tied a strong string around the ridges of the conically shaped Top with a bulging head, at the bottom of which there was a pin on which the Top could be spun. Keeping the end of the string between your thumb and forefinger, you would fling the top, which then landed on the ground, spinning beautifully for some time. It is also an art to pick up a spinning Top from the ground on to your palm without breaking its momentum. Some boys were also experts in the art of flinging the Top with a reverse swing, managing to get the spinning top directly on to their palms without hitting the ground! I must confess that I was not good at it and envied the boys who could perform this trick!

And there were games like Kho Kho, based on the popular musical chair concept, featuring boys and girls instead of the chairs or HU-THU-THU (kabadi..kabadi in Tamil). I also remember playing “leap frog game” in which one of the boys would stand at the centre; bending at his waist and the others would run fast to jump over the boy using both their hands, placed on the back of the boy as a lever, to propel themselves forward. Once a boy suddenly decided to stand up while I was about to jump over him, sending me for a toss, resulting in a deep cut on my forehead! Even today I carry the scar left behind due the stitches required to help me recover from the injury.

Hiring a bicycle by the hour and going around the buildings was another activity which the boys and girls indulged in. A serious accident involving the cycle that I had hired put an end to this activity as my mother refused to give any money for this purpose again.

Flying kites during certain seasons was an exciting activity in which even the adults in the building complex participated, at times.

If it was raining or for any reason we could not undertake outdoor activities then there were always games like carrom, chess, cards and board games that would keep us busy! Even Pallankuzhi a traditional indoor activity using a wooden board with 14 hollow portions and a collection of sea shells or `Dhaya Kattam’ (modern day LUDO), were popular with both boys and girls!

The variety and choice of games that we could play then were mind boggling, and we had the freedom to do what we liked, as long as we did not get into trouble which necessitated the interference of the parents!

I pity the modern day kids, many of them growing up in apartment complexes without adequate space for outdoor games. Even if there are playing grounds in the locality, the paranoid parents do not allow
them to go and play because of security concerns. The parents who can afford ofcourse send their children to special coaching classes for cricket, basket ball or football etc. paying a hefty fee. Even these are aborted because of the priority given to attending the mandatory special classes on different subjects, considered necessary if the boys/girls have to perform well in their classes! The end result- is that the boys and girls are always glued to a variety of gizmos and electronic media, entertaining themselves with games and cartoons at home. Missing the fun of outdoor activities, so necessary for the development of the body and mind of kids. And also for lessons in relationship management!

The only solution to this problem is for the Schools to have a compulsory games period for all classes at the end of every day before the children leave the school for their homes! If the school has space constraints then such periods could be rotated between different classes on different days!

If the situation is allowed to be continued, I am afraid the modern day kids will turn out to be intelligent zombies unable to face the Real World! Young parents and concerned grand parents! Think about it.

A Visa to Vaikuntam

Visiting Divya Desams is a dream which many Vaishnavites who worship any form of Lord Vishnu nurture, thanks to the huge awareness created through television by Shri Velukkudi Krishnan, a corporate honcho turned preacher. So much so that lakhs of Tamil speaking households and housewives start their day only after watching his programme on TV every morning; leading to a popular comedian quipping “In my home `Kappikudi (drinking morning coffee) happens only after listening to `Velukkudi!”.

I was free, having retired at the age of 65, and so my wife expressed a desire to visit the 106 of 108 Divya Desams, also known as 108 Tirupathys- temples for Narayana (Vishnu) located across the length and breadth of the country (and Nepal as well). Narayana or Vishnu is worshipped in different forms in these temples, but the significant feature is that there are special devotional songs composed by one of the 12 Alwars, the Vaishnavite Saints, on the specific deity and their consort, located in every one of these 106 temples.

The breakup of the locations of these temples is as follows:

Tamilnadu-82, Kerala-13, Andhra Pradesh-2, Gujarath-1, Uttarkhand-3, UP-4, Nepal-1.

Among the very famous temples included in this list are: Ranganathan temple in Srirangam, Balaji temple in Tirupathy, Anantha Padmanabha temple in Trivandrum, Parthasarathy temple in Chennai, Badrinath (one of the Char-dhams) in Uttarkhand & Mukthinath in Nepal, the last two located on the Himalayas.

Out of the 82 temples located in Tamilnadu, 36 are located in and around Kumbakonam and 22 in Kanchipuram. While we could cover the 22 temples in Kanchipuram in one day, we visited the 36 temples around Kumbakonam in 3 days using a knowledgeable local taxi driver, who not only knew the specific locations and timings of the temples but also had the mobile numbers. of every pujari! Invariably he would fore-warn the pujari about our visit to the temple which ensured that it was kept open when we visited the same.

It is not that easy for the less privileged people. Since many of the temples are located in remote villages, a common man can reach them only by using public transport upto a certain point and then has to walk the remaining distance; and even then very often to find the temples closed as the Pujaris would have gone home locking the temples after performing the mandatory Puja in the morning. (Thanks to Ms Jayalalitha’s initiative, who during her earlier stint as the Chief Minister of TN, had the government sanction a special budget for such Poojas in these temples.)

Compared to the huge crowd that many of the famous temples mentioned earlier attract, most of the other temples, some of them over 2000 years old, attract hardly any visitors. Many of them are in very dilapidated condition. However, in recent times the TVS Group in the South has been spending a lot of money on renovating the temples and also providing amenities to devotees visiting these temples. What they have done at `Nava Tirupathy` in Tirunelveli and Sholingur are examples of their efforts.

Visiting some of these temples involves hazardous journeys and some test your endurance limits!
Visiting the nine temples in Ahobhilam in Andhra is both hazarardous and an endurance test. You have to walk 6 kms through Naxal and wild animal infested, dense forests on a mountain to reach one of the temples for Narasimha (Pavana Narasimha), and another involves walking on pebbles and stones for more than an hour and crossing a flowing mountain stream (which could pose a danger during rainy seasons) and then walk up the 400 steps on a mountain to reach Jwala Narasimha. A real adventure indeed!

Travelling to Mukthinath located at 13500 ft in the Himalayas in Nepal is an experience by itself. The journey can be undertaken by both road and air upto Pokhra, which is the second largest town in Nepal. From Pokhra to Jumsum everyone has to take a short 20 minute ride on the 22 seater propeller driven twin engine Dornier aircrafts, which operate like Mofussil buses! They look like flying contraptions which can come apart anytime- especially the ones operated by Tara Airways, a local airline. Everyone gets into these jalopies, climbing one at a time on a portable short steel ladder which is held in position by the sole airhostess! No security checks, no queues! As soon as the deplaning passengers get down, the waiting passengers rush to get in. And you are airborne in no time and ready to land even before you had the opportunity to savour the spectacular view of the Himalayas which you pass through with fear in your mind and prayer in your hearts.

From Jumpsom it is a 45 minute, bone rattling ride in a local jeep, to Rani Powa at the foot of the mountain on top of which the temple is located. Until two years ago helicopters used to fly devotees right next to the temple. Since this service has been discontinued due to operational reasons, people either take a two hour walk up the mountain or the two wheeler service operated by the local Nepali boys. Sitting on the pillion of the vehicle and holding on to the rider for dear life, devotees reach the temple premise in 20 minutes praying all the way through the narrow winding mountain path. Invariably you can hear the boys screaming to their squirming passengers not to shake, because any untoward movement can send the vehicle for a toss! It is also a sight to see the efforts required to make the old, fat and infirm people get on to the vehicle. My wife Prabha had a problem at that height due to the intense cold and lack of oxygen, causing some anxious moments for me.

Though the journey to Badrinath is not physically taxing it is hazardous to the extent that the acts of God and nature may put impediments, in the form of landslides and unexpected road blocks; sometimes leaving your vehicle stranded among serpentine queues for hours on end. On the positive side; on your way, you can enjoy a dip in the holy Ganges at Hardwar and witness the famous evening arathis on the banks of the river; later visit Rishikesh, and then move on to the see the confluence of Alaknanda and Bagirathi at Devaprayag before they combine to become the Ganges; or upstream watch the Alaknanda merging with Manadakini river at Rudraprayag.

Once you reach Badrinath, located at 11,000 ft and after finishing your darshan of Lord Narasimha, you can visit Manna village, considered to be the last Indian village on the mountains, which is just three kilometers away from Badrinath. Here you are treated to the spectacular sight of river Saraswathy gushing with all its fury from a nearby hill, the only place you can see the river because mythology tells us that due to a curse from Vyasa she goes underground all through her journey, to Triveni Sangam at Allahabadd where she merges with Ganga and Yamuna.

Another tough location was the Narasimha temple located at Sholingur, near Vellore in TN, where you have to walk up 1500 steep steps, with a walking stick, tackling hundreds of monkeys all the way! During our trip a determined monkey tried to snatch my wife’s handbag who was also equally determined not to part with it. The fisticuff between them was free entertainment for the other devotees passing by but terror stricken moments for my wife!

It is amazing that a person like me who finds it difficult to climb two stories to my office, could undertake all these difficult journeys without much trouble. That is what implicit faith in the Lord does to you. The feeling of achievement and fulfillment that both Prabha and I felt after visiting the 106 temples is worth all the troubles that we had to undergo during the three years that it took us to complete the project.

In the beginning of this article I mentioned about visiting 106 out of the 108 Divya Deshams on this earth. The balance two are located in `Vaikundam` and `Thiruparkadal, the original abode of the Lord Vishnu in heaven. As a Vaishnavite I can now proudly say that by visiting the 106 temples on this earth I have got my Visa for a Darshan of the Lord in the Heaven. I just have to wait patiently for the ticket and the departure call! Having fulfilled all my worldly duties and lived a full life, I am ready to face my creator any time he wants to meet me! Jai Narasimha!


R.V.Rajan

Email: rvrajan42@rediffmail.com
Mob. 9840392082.