The Trip - Part 1

Standing on Kalyan station at midnight, I was set to leave for ‘Akkalkot’, a small village famous for the swami named ‘Shree Swami Samarth’ a.k.a ‘Akkalkot Swami’. It was nine hour long journey that lie in front of me and that too on board ‘The great Indian railways’ which I doubt any person looks forward too. I was supposed to travel via the Chennai express and for obvious reasons was surrounded by people who were talking in a language which was nothing more than jumbled words for my ears. The only people familiar were my family consisting of my mother, aunt (mother’s sister), her husband (my uncle of course), my cousin brother and sister and three of their acquaintances (all girls). In short we were making sure that we had enough crowd to let the lord take notice of us when we reached there. I watched my mother and aunt and found them silently chanting the name ‘Shree Swami Samarth’ in their minds and got a slight indication of the day that lay ahead. And the ladies didn’t disappoint.

After the grueling journey in the train, we got down on the Akkalkot Road station just to find that the platform for this station was nothing but an arrangement of tiles on the ground as the platform was a good 3 feet lower than the regular train platforms. I looked at the time and amazingly found it to be exactly the time promised by the railways (This was my first experience of the fact that this place was indeed capable of miracles). We crossed the tracks and out of the station looking for transport to get to the main temple. On leaving the station we saw a couple of six seater rickshaws (Dukkar as they are called in the parts of Kalyan and Dombivli) with the drivers looking expectantly at us as potential customers. Since there were nine of us, I figured that we would be requiring both the ‘Dukkars’ but was shocked when the drivers asked us to either pay the complete fare for both the vehicles which was close to Rs 450 or the other option was for all 9 of us to get into one single dukkar along with the two already seated inside and the driver o0f course for a fare of Rs 15 per person. There was no doubt which option was selected by the seniors and then I watched the amazing spectacle of how we middle class people can turn into professional contortionists and bring along the possibility of fitting a total of 12 people in a certain vehicle designed to fit only six people. After fitting ourselves in the dukkar we started the 10 Km journey to the temple and I prepared myself for the test but just like any test in my engg days, I had not prepared enough.

After completing the seemingly impossible journey we reached the temple gates at 10:05 hrs and my mother stepped out and ran into the temple at full speed leaving me both confused and astounded. Confused about the reason behind the sudden sprint and astounded at the speed that my mother was capable of. I got out the luggage and paid for the rickshaw and started waiting for my mother to be back as we had to book our rooms in the nearby accommodation facility built for the devotees visiting the temple. After a total of about 10 minutes she came back at the same speed and told me that she had registered for a pooja which was supposed to start in the next 60 minutes. I looked towards the temple and silently prayed for strength to get through the day that lay ahead. A bell rang inside the temple indicating that ‘The Test Begins’.

... To be continued