India Trip 2008 (2)

I stopped at Govinda Govinda at my last blog.... thats the chant that will accompany you all the way into Tirumala where Lord Venkadachalapathi is. Let me continue my journey there.



It takes approximately 3 hours to get to Tirupati from Kanchipuram. As India is going super fast, our car which was a Toyota Innova was equipped with a small VCD player. Although tired from the journeys from the air to the roads, I couldn't sleep. So, I asked our driver Abdul to play some movie. He had Dasavatharam starring Kamal Hassan and though I had not watched the movie I opted to watch Vadivelu comedy to further enlighten (laugh rather) my trip as I would prefer to watch a Kamal Hassan movie with full passion though many of my dear and close friends know that iI am a Rajni fan.



We arrived at Tirupati at about 2 pm. Well I left Kanchipuram at 9.30am and as i have mentioned earlier the trip takes about 3 hours. Was it traffic? No!!! Our car tyre got punctured and guess what? The driver did not have a spare tyre. We kept asking the driver how come the car not come with A SPARE TYRE?



We waited for an hour for the driver to get the car sorted out. And again without further ado, I went on scolding the driver for not having a spare tyre. And thats when he asked me what was a spare tyre and goshhhhhhhhhh thats when i remember watching Tamil movies mentioning "Stephanie" in this context "Stephanie" means spare tyre. No wonder he couldn't understand when we kept on asking if he had a spare tyre.



On why it is called "Stephanie" I don't know. Was "stephanie" a famous name for keeps? Or spare wife? God knows but i don't and i believe many don't. But i believe my theory is close to correct and so I think.



While waiting for the car for close to an hour, we were stuck at this crossroad town. A rather small town where we could not even get an ice cream. The roads so dusty that i believe my cough which refuses to heal originated from that particular town.



Anyway, we arrived at Tirupati close to 2pm. As we were not even able to get an ice cream at our previous unscheduled stop, we were dead hungry. Bhimmas.... that was a hotel plus restaurant. Please bear in mind that in India a hotel more often than not means a restaurant. But here we got both though we were not staying there. I as usual ordered my mini meals which is a lot for most of us and the rest ordered different items. Mum ordered "Singapore styled mee hoon". We in Malaysia know what Singapore Mee Hoon is and what I expected having ordered the food for my mum was to be close to that. Yes! Singapore Mee Hoon came but alas not close to what we have here. To my dismay or rather surprise the Singapore Mee Hoon is India come with small strips of "omam pudi". What is omam pudi? Little murrukku or mixer as it is favouritely called in Malaysia. Hmmmm!!!!! An improvement to a Chinese delicacy.



Right after lunch it was off to our hotel. Fortune Kences Hotel. All along my journey to Tirupati, the hotel had its advertisement vis billboards. As i had expected through the advertisements, the hotel was good. As it is the case with all hotels in Tirupati as it is my second trip there.....it is all clean and well kept. Why not? They have the hotel there with Lord Vengadachalapathi as partners. They better keep it clean and neat plus profitable. Why profitable? I will explain.



In my previous blog or blogs i would have mentioned that Tirupathi is the the second richest temple in the world after Vatican City if not sooner or later to be overtaken. The story is this. Lord Vengadachalapthi took a rebirth or another form where he is to take PADMAVATHi as his wife. Mind you, his first wife is Mahalakshmi and to Hindus we all know who she is....the Goddess of Wealth.



In this rebirth or what we can call reincarnation, our Lord is a poor guy who is a shepherd. Padmavathi is the daughter of a King. Somehow as we all believe in fairy tales, the poor shepherd and the king's daughter fell in love. To the King's dismay disapproving the love (not knowing the shepherd is actually Lord V), the King had proposed a big dowry that the shepherd could not afford.



This is when the shepherd went back his role as Lord Vengedachalapathi and had asked Lord Kuberan (the lord for wealth) give Lord Venki a loan with interest. While Lord Kuberan was hesitant to give Lord Venki loan on interest as Lord Kuberan believed that Lord Venki did not have to do so if he assumed being Lord Venki, it was with the insistence of Lord Venki that the loan was passed as it was supposed to take a natural process of Karma. Apparently the interest will not end its payment till the end of the world(kaliyugam) and hence whatever donations or gift we present at the temple goes towards repayment of Lord Venki's loan from Lord Kuberan.

I'll stop at this and continue later. Ciao