I’m Pretty Sure this is Blasphemy.
Imagine a man, bare knuckled and lusciously bearded, living in a forest, and beating up palm trees with the sheer force of will. While his mind is still sharp and his toes are still stubby, the many years of sedentary existence have left him badly out of shape, so much so that people who try to relate by walking a mile in his shoes are inevitably left short of breath.
One fine day, somebody calls him and suggests that it would be a great idea to walk across the desert to an oasis to get some water. Despite him not exactly wanting to see an oasis, despite the sheer craziness of walking across the desert to get to water, and despite the damned well in his own backyard, the man agrees; for he loves this person very much. He sets off in his trusty hiking boots and his trusty, but by now, somewhat tight, hiking shorts.
When he arrives, a perilous journey behind him, he frowns at the sight of a crowd the size of a small country, queued up as civilized people tend to, all waiting for their turn at the oasis. While he started out as fresh as a baby’s bottom in diaper advert, the journey has wearied him and right now, water actually seems like the best thing since sliced bread. And speaking of sliced bread, he has also grown hungry. But he waits in line with the rest of them. And then finally he is there, at the front of the queue, in a gold-leaf adorned chamber, finally at the watering-hole he has traveled so far to see.
Now imagine his utter fucking dismay, when the only water in sight is a muddy little puddle at the bottom a suspicious looking wishing-well; and before he can even get a good look at the water, much less slurp at it greedily, he is asked by a couple of burly, tonsured men to bugger off. And on top of all that, not even a sight of the promised (free) Laddu.
The point is, my mother thought it would be a great idea to walk to Tirupati this weekend. As I found out the same weekend, and as you will too if you happen to read on, it was not.
A quick history lesson. The temple at Tirupati is a shrine dedicated to one of Lord Vishnu’s avatars. The Cliff’s notes on Vishnu’s avatars; all of them demanded a willing suspension of disbelief and a couple of them were even blue. (None of them were in 3d, however.)
About Vishnu himself, very little is known except that back in the primordial dark ages, back when the Dead Sea merely suffered from a light case of the common cold and back when the concept of going medieval on someone’s ass was far too ahead of it’s time, he had a particularly conspicuous habit of reincarnating himself as those bad-ass types who fought monsters and taught people lessons about morality, all whilst simultaneously playing cow-friendly tunes on a flute.
As for the actual pilgrimage itself, the fashionable route is pretty, albeit slightly boring. If you are especially lucky, you might witness a pilgrim getting mauled to death by one of the many neighborhood leopards. Without sweet lady luck however, you might be that pilgrim. While the route itself is about 10 km and 3800 steps long, the journey lasts anything between 3 to 7 hours depending on how much heroin you shoot before. (It’s not a question of if, but rather, how much.)
And like a twelve level pyramid of chimpanzees, the whole journey is completely unnecessary.
I’m not here to start some polemic debate about religion or God, but I am pretty sure that even if there is an all-powerful, omniscient Joe Pesci character up in the sky, it would be down right superstitious to think that he’s be interested in bartering with you. Do you think I would help you get into a great college or buy you a Ferrari in exchange for all the hair on your head? No. So why would God?
Nor am I here to debunk all superstitious beliefs as irrational or baseless. Far from it. For instance, it is widely believed in the Orient that if the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning is a shoe, then it portends misfortune. But when you think about it, if a shoe is what you see first up when you crack your eyelids open in the morning, odds are that you are in the middle of getting kicked in the face which, admittedly, is some pretty bad fortune.
Which begs the question, if all this is not about religion or God or superstition, then what the hell is it about anyways?
Damned if I know.
If I may hazard a guess, perhaps, like the all powerful, omniscient Joe Pesci of TV shows, Seinfeld, this piece was about nothing.
Firstly, I don’t know how you figured it out but I’m guessing the last sentence might have given it away.
Secondly, like Seinfeld, there is much fun to be had with a supporting cast that includes a bald man.
Thirdly, I think I should go catch the frog that has somehow leveraged the “mi casa su casa” clause on my room.