From Tirupathi to Hyderabad...

I can't believe its been more than 2 months after landing in US and I still haven't completed writing the posts of the India trip. It doesn't help that these days I just don't feel like writing a post!! I dunno whats wrong with me :(. I have a serious backlog of experiences to be jotted down and here I am being lazy!! Its been more than a month since I last posted. Anyways, now that I have mustered enough courage and strength (:-D) to write a post, I hope I'll be able to post atleast one post per week. Also, this is the last post in the India series.

Time travel to 3 months back :-D. After the house warming ceremony, we had to stay 3 nights in the house. Yup, another ritual. Meanwhile, in the 3 days, I caught up with close friends and finished some of the shopping I had to do, while Sriram roamed some more for things related to the house.

On 14th May 2006, we left for Tirupathi in the noon after about 2 PM. In this case the "we" constituted of Sri, me, both set of parents + Raghu maava (Gayathri aunty couldn't join us because of health problems of my Ammamma) and Veena aunty (Puttanna kakka didn't come due to the children + his work). Again I didn't carry my camera thinking it'll not be allowed in the temple anyways and there'll be no place to keep it then. Well, as usual, I regretted that decision big time :-p.

We reached the top of Tirumala that night and we stayed in one of the guest houses booked by dad. Well, obviously with our really tight schedule there was no time to climb the hills and hence it was by car. Early next morning we got ready and left for the temple. We first went to the Varahaswamy temple. As the legend goes, the devotees are first supposed to visit this temple and then go to the Venkateshwara temple. We were there pretty early, yet, the line was pretty long. After the darshana, we headed to the Venkateshwara temple which also had a pretty long queue. This despite the fact that we were not going in the normal or the special darshana, but in the Kalayanotsavam line. It was only later that we found out that 500 couples are allowed inside for this "special" seva!! God save God from so many people!! :).

Anyways after hoardes of queues and lots of pushing and pulling, we sat for the Kalayanotsavam. I admit I was a bit disappointed as I thought there will be something for each particular couple to do. We were just made to sit and view the pooja that was happening on a stage. After the marriage rituals were over, we headed for the darshana of Lord Venkateshwara. The lord is indeed impressive, but more impressive is the number of people who come to see Him daily :).

After the darshana, we had prasada and packed up to leave Tirumala. We did stop at Tiruchanoor to see the Padmavathi temple. Satisfied with the way the trip went, we left for Bangalore and were able to make it within the 15th May 2006 night :).

After a day's rest on 16th May 2006 (more like some more visit to friends crammed in the day :-D), we packed up and left Bangalore on a train to Hyderabad on 17th May 2006. This time the we included the both set of parents, Sri and me. Darsh couldn't make it as he had his final semester exams. We reached Hyderabad early morning on 18th May 2006. The new home of my parents-in-law is beautiful. Its an apartment, but is surrounded by trees and is outside the city. The most beautiful thing was that there were some mango trees beside the apartment and you could listen to the Kogile (koyal birds) singing throughout the day. The apartment has 3 rooms and is pretty big. They have gotten lovely wardrobe work done in all the rooms and the cost of everything was a steal deal compared to our apartment in Bangalore :).

The Hyderabad stay sort of became our pitstop - a place to rest for a couple of moments before we left, just because poor Sri fell ill. Maybe due to all the weather change and water changes in the various places. Or maybe staying in US does reduce your immunity :-p. The latter is not really true as I consider myself usually very prone to illness and nothing happened to me :-D. Sri had a pretty bad fever for 3 days. Yup, he did visit the doctor and yup, he did get antibiotics. But his being down meant we couldn't really visit the couple of relatives we have on Sri's dad's side, who all stay in Hyderabad.

But they were all very sportive. Their attitude was that so what if we are not able to visit them, they could visit us :). And so they did :). So we spent the first few days getting visited :-D. Sri did recover after 3 days, but the virus spread to my mom and she went down with fever. Looks like the virus was all around 'cause later my dad fell ill and so did one of Sriram's cousins. But we did manage to squeeze in some shopping and a dinner in between. The heat was pretty bad, but manageable :).

24th May 2006 was Sri's paternal grandparents' tithi. I never had the good fortune of meeting them as they both passed away on the same day many years ago. Hence on that day, my parents-in-law had arranged all the rituals at their home. The rituals were all completed without any hassles. Also, Sri's uncles, aunts and cousins all were there, so it was again nice to meet them. We had a good time catching up :).

25th May 2006 was the last day in Hyderabad. We had to leave by train to Bangalore that evening. Man!! Now thats a story, wait, an adventure :-D. Evening it was raining very heavily. We booked a taxi but the roads got flooded and we got late when we arrived at the railway station. We found out that our train was in Platform 2, but when we reached Platform 1, we saw that the train was already leaving. Sri had gone on ahead, we didn't know where he was. We thought we had missed the train and stopped. That was when the train stopped moving. We started running again with all our luggage (we didn't even have time to book a coolie) and ran on the overhead bridge as fast as we could, but my mom was just recovering from her illness and couldn't run very fast. My parents-in-law somehow managed to get on the now-slowly-starting-to-move-again-train. I dumped my luggage with them and ran back to help mom. But by the time we both reached the train, the movement was comsiderably fast. My mom was totally out of breath and I didn't know what to do. Just when we thought we had missed the train this time, the damn thing stopped again. This time, finally, we were able to get on it.

Later we found out that the first time the train stopped, Sri had pulled the chain and the second time my parents-in-law did. We also found that the train had been stopped a couple of times before us too as many people were running late because of the downpour and the flooding. We did have a tough time getting to our compartment as we had got on to the train on one end and our compartment was way on the other end. The crossing of so many bogies with our heavy luggage was almost like a rigourous trek :-D. Probably it would have been a bit better had my dad been with us. But he had left earlier to Bangalore to be the official cook for Darsh :-D. Anyways, all's well that ends well :-D.

After another 2 days in Bangalore full of last minute shopping and packing, we headed to the airport on 28th May 2006 night to leave to US. I was kind of inconsolable and the poem "Encore" I wrote almost as soon as I reached US was a result of that. It was really painful saying goodbye :(.

Thats it. One month passed and became a handful of memories. Just like a dream which wasn't enough. Which left me longing for more...

The only satisfaction was having both sets of parents almost all the time with us. Well, atleast I had a month and I could go back for a visit in one year. I know of several friends who have been away for years without going back. I always thought I understood their pain, but actually I never did. Until now.




Mom and dad, I only hope I get to see you again soon...