Sunday, April 20, 2008

Chaos in Birla Temple


Me and S visited the famous Birla temple yestarday.
Though he had visited it lot many times, for me it was the first time.
I had just read the name of the temple in one of the A.P Tourist guide but didn't know that the whole temple was built in white marble!!!
The temple resembles more or less like the ISKON temple in B'lore but only that its marble built.
It's a marvellous structure with very explicit carvings and spread around a vast area.
But there were certain things which irked us both whlie entering the temple.
Firstly, it was the security- which required us to surrender our mobile phones in the counter.
I had seen temples where they asked people to switch off their mobiles but never had i seen this kind of security anywhere.
And the result of such security was obviously people "loosing" their mobile phones.
As we walked up to the main temple what we got to see was the endless Q of people, and ofcourse it took us more than 45 mins to atlast see the GOD.
Now comes the most interesting part- before we could God's darshan we received 'thirtha' and next stands a 'priest' literally streching his hands and snatching the money from my hands which i was supposed to put in the Hundi.
Me, on the other hand, thinking that there is no hundi royally gave all the money to the pujari.
Only after all this drama were we allowed to have the darshan.
And there was the 'HUNDI' for which i didn't have any money left:)
So the meaning here is simple and needs no explanation.
The preist did not have just one or two notes, there was bundle of it.
S being completely enraged with it, decided to lodge a complaint againt the pujari at the office.
We went to the office and they wanted everything in writing, so we did.
While this was happening, i saw a man enter the office, stand near one of the security personnel, sneake a Rs.50 note, speak to him in Telugu and vanish.
And what was that all about nobody knows.
After we gave the complaint in writing, the priest was called for and enquired for which he tried giving lot many excuses.
Later, even after so many arguments,we felt that it didn't lead us anywhere.
It's just for that time being he would be enquired and left unpunished.
So we decided to leave the matter then and there and were out of the blessed temple.

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