The project I am leading in TCS includes processes at different locations across India, mainly Baroda with around 650 and Chennai with around 1400 associates. After having planned and launched the project successfully two weeks back, I got to go to Chennai (formerly Madras) for a couple of days. I met my team, the leaders and some other key people for my activities and finally got to know the face behind the calls and mails I was having everyday. I also took advantage of my company paid flight to the South of India and added a weekend to visit some places around.
An absolute highlight was the trip to Tirupati. Together with 4 friends from the Janus batch who have been placed in Chennai after our common induction in Bombay, I got ready to visit one of the most important temples of India, every day thousands of pilgrims come to this place, often easily reaching 100.000. My friends had prepared me well in advance that we will have to queue up during hours to get in. The result was the following journey:
- 22.30 departure in Chennai
- 2.00 arrival at the ticket counter to get the 50 Rupees fast track ticket which reduces waiting hours from 12-13 to 5-6 hours
- 2.00 – 5.00 sitting in the queue to wait for the ticket counter to open
- 5.30 – 8.00 –go to a crappy hotel, “freshen up”, have breakfast, travel to the temple.
- 8.00 – 10.00 queuing up to get into the temple (which is absolutely fantastic timing, everybody was absolutely thrilled that it was so quick
- 10.19.53 – 10.19.55 see actual idol inside the temple
- 10.20 – 12.30 roam around the place, visit souvenir stores, etc and leave
- 12.30 – 19.00 lunch in same crappy hotel, travel back to Chennai and visit one more much smaller temple on the way
So now some of you might wonder why the hell someone would take all this hastle for only around 3-4 seconds. Good question, I asked myself the same before I went there. The answer is the religious power of this temple. Generally, Indian temples are the exact opposite to our churches: they’re beautiful from outside, but inside there is only the idol of a god placed, some priest and the place where you give your offerings to the god. and that’s it. Temples are relatively small, people just quickly go inside to give their respect to the god and then go out again. Often they stay around the temple for a while to pray or meditate but hardly inside. In general, for me it was mostly a little bit disappointing to see.
However, the visit of Tirupati was a perfect illustration of why the temples are so special. The temple in Tirupati is dedicated to Vishnu and Hindus believe that you can only visit it if the god called you to do so. It is said that if you plan to visit it without being called, something will cross your plans and you will not be able to come. Many people are said to have tried various times to come before they were actually able to visit the place. Once they are there, many people shave their head and offer the hair to the god. Also women. Even though everyone knows that the hair will be sold for good money make wigs, they do it for the god.
Waiting in the queue, people chant and shout for the god. I felt like on a soccer match where suddenly one shouts something and everyone around shouts the name of the god in a chorus. The moment you are inside the actual temple, you get carried by the crowd, yelled at and physically pushed by the security guards to move quickly. There are so many people there, you can hardly breathe and to be honest I was so tense that by the time I realized that I should have a look at the inside of the temple and the idol, I was already carried out of it by the crowd. There is nothing calm and contemplative in this temple at all, as we usually imagine religious places. It’s loud, smelly, crowded and absolutely stressful. But still…it is amazingly peaceful. When the people come out of the temple they have this amazing happiness on their face to have been able to see this god. This makes the place to be surrounded by an extraordinary energy… It may sound weird for us, but it’s just an incredibly spiritual aura.
