For the last several years, I have been traveling to Chennai (southern India) for an annual business trip. Each year I visited Chennai, I always made it a point to meet up with my business partner, Gururajan. The last time we met, Gururajan and I decided to go to Tirupati Balaji from Chennai and we started to plan out the trip immediately.
The day was finally here and I was off to Chennai. The journey on the train was long and after many hours, my train finally arrived at the Chennai train station at five o’clock in the morning. Even though it was early in the morning, I was struck by the City’s intense heat and quickly made my way to my hotel.
When I finally reached the hotel, I looked at my watch and saw I still had some time to rest up before my scheduled meeting with Gururajan at ten o’clock. Just as I was about to leave to meet with Gururajan, I got a call from him stating that he was delayed at the office would need a few more hours and decided to meet at the park Street station at one o’clock in the afternoon. I took the opportunity to finish up some of my own work before our long road trip from Chennai to Tirupati Balaji.
Park Street station was a walking distance from my hotel, I arrived on time as scheduled and we started the journey for Tirupati Balaji shortly thereafter. The plan was to get there, take a VIP pass, do a darshan and leave early in the morning as I had a bus from Chennai to Thrissur the next day. We reached Tirupati at about 5:30 pm listening to southern music in his car.
It was a very pleasant experience when we entered Tirupati, there are sloping roads from Tirupati to the temple inside, from there it is a different experience to go by car, and from there we reached Tirupati around 6:15 pm.
After arriving there was a sense of excitement, parking the car, Mr.Gururajan and I both walked towards the ticket window and were shocked to find the VIP ticket window was closed! We had no idea the VIP window was always on Wednesdays and it felt like our entire plan was unraveling in front of our eyes. If we wanted to do the darshan, the only way in was to wait in the normal line.
Given the amount of time and effort we put into planning this out, we were not going to leave without a darshan and so we went to the normal line. As we stood there looking for the queue for the normal line, we were eventually told that we actually needed a token and a current rate, our token number would not be called until 5 AM the following day. Even though I had a bus to catch, we were determined to do the darshan. So, we found a place to sit in the main hall and patiently waited for our turn to come.
Tirupati Balaji's Aarti, Prayer on the big screen in the hall was a full devotional atmosphere, this was a first and different experience for me. After sitting in the hall for about two hours we were hungry so we requested to go out for dinner. He told us to get back in the hall at around 10:00 pm. We took the token and left.
There is also a magnificent place outside the Balaji Temple. We went beyond demonstrating the entire place. There was a nice light show going on and we enjoyed it very much. In the dark, the Balaji Temple shone with gold. Anyone who sees it is stunned.
We proceeded from there straight to the line of Prasad, it also took about an hour and a half, we took the Prasad and had some snacks outside, it was about 10:15 and we were heading back to the hall when we were walking towards the hall. My eyes suddenly fell on the VIP ticket window and this is what! It was open!
I yelled across to Mr.Gururajan and rushed to the ticket window and said two tickets, to my surprise he gave me two tickets and slammed the window shutters! Mr.Gururajan believed that the window would have been opened due to some work but this ticket which was found suddenly filled so much excitement in our bodies.
Mr.Gururajan and I immediately took the ticket and proceeded to the VIP gate, there was no one there. We went straight to the main temple with security check and in just half an hour we had a very peaceful darshan inside, it didn't take long to reach the main temple because nobody was there, this was exactly a dream for both of us!
It was as if God had blessed us and just when we thought we could not be blessed more, something else happened…
It was unbelievable and unexpected for us! To go out and see around 11:15! We were so happy that we couldn't believe it. After leaving, Mr.Gururajan came up with the idea that if we can't find a hotel like this now, we will go back to the normal line and visit there again in the morning, then we went back to our hall. Back there again we surprised! What is this! The hall was empty and then when checked he said that everyone is going inside for darshan and allowed us to go in as well. We quickly rushed in and proceeded towards the temple inside the hall thanking the brother who gave us the token.
There too we hurried ahead and reached the temple, standing there in line, there too we got out after half an hour of darshan. Before 12.00 pm we had done darshan inside Tirupati Balaji temple twice in an hour and a half, this was an unforgettable event of my life!
I don't know if I have ever heard of such an incident happening to anyone, but at that time God really had mercy on us! This journey of Tirupati Balaji will always be remembered.
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