My cousin Prit who lives in Germany was on a brief visit to India, and had come to meet friends in Bangalore. Whenever Prit comes to India, he tries to make it to the famous Venkateshwara temple in Tirupati and this time was no exception.

There are a few companies that operate a 24 hour Bangalore-Tirupati-Bangalore package tour. As part of one of these tours, one boards a bus late in the evening after dinner, and reaches Tirupati in the wee hours of the morning. There - at about 3 am or so - one has to queue up outside a counter until the counter opens (usually a wait of about two hours). Queuing up that early generally means that the queue itself is not too long. You could probably expect about 20 or so people in front of you, which by Indian standards is a practically non-existent queue. Then you have to purchase a ticket, whose value depends on what privileges you’d like to have. Everyone knows that faith is big business, and paying more to seek the Lord’s blessing more comfortably is not frowned upon. After all passengers in your bus have obtained their tickets, the bus drops you off at wherever you need to join another much longer queue. This queue then over the next several hours slowly winds its way around the temple complex inching ever closer to the sanctum sanctorum where the Lord awaits. Note once again that this applies only to mere mortals. Others, whom the Lord has already smiled plentifully upon, usually breeze through without having to wait a millisecond, or so I have heard. I have also heard that these are the same privileged ones who breeze through in their Mercs and their BMWs, and will not hesitate in expediting your meeting with the Almighty if you somehow get into their bad books. But being a mere mortal myself, I am far removed from the world of these godly creatures and cannot attest to the veracity of these claims. Anyway, once you have reached the destination of the queue, things happen fast. You get pushed and shoved around and get a few seconds of face-to-face time with the omnipotent one, before the queue regurgitates you and spits you out not very far from your waiting bus. You must then wait some more until your co-passengers are similarly spat out. It is worth noting here that your co-passengers will have invariably bought a ticket of the same value as you - there is a reason they are in your bus after all. This means that all of you will be ejected at more-or-less the same time, give or take 30 minutes. After everyone has happily reunited, the bus will begin its return journey to Bangalore arriving a little less than 24 hours after your departure.

So coming back to my cousin Prit, he wanted to take one of these 24 hour package tours, and since he didn’t have any company, he asked me if I’d like to join him. Remember that I have been without a job for about 20 days now, and a casual observer will say that I have all the time in the world to do this trip. But if you have read my previous post, you know that I have no time AT ALL for this trip. Then again, if you know me, you would know that I am not one to say no to any trip. So long story short, I conveniently set aside all my prior commitments and gave two thumbs up to Prit.