Saturday, May 3, 2008

Lord Balaji's another abode near Pune

Where in Maharashtra ?
Narayanpur - 36 kms from intersection of Sinhgad road and Banglore Pune Bypass.
How do we get there ?
36 kms is not a long distance from pune; two , four wheeler or any Publictransport buses going towards Satara should be good I guess.
It's absolutely beautiful temple and I must say absolutely well kept.
They say it's a replica of Tirupati, unfortunately I have not yet got a chance to see Balaji at Tirupati , I must thank Venkateshwara group who has played a major role in building and managing this temple here.
We started at 7 am on 3rd May, and in like 40 minutes we are at the door steps of the temple. Right from the entry everything seemed to be well organised. The guards guided us to the parking area and to the footwear stand. Luckily since it was pretty early (around 7.45 am) the temple was not much crowded.
As soon as we started to get into the temple aarti(morning prayers) started so we had to waittill it was over in about 25-30 mins. We were let inside the temple through the metal detectors. A need to put metal detectors at God's Footsteps ....hurts soooo much.. I really prayed to Balaji to put some thought into the anti social elements who put the authorities to fix the detectors.
Any way , but the darshan was unexpectedly very nice, I have heard and experienced , all this big and rich temples do not allow you to stand in front of the idol for more than half a minute even..But today I really felt nice to stand and have a good look an the idol and capture it (in my mind...).
Inside the temple everything was so clean and well kept , I was really happy to see it , the authorities there were monitoring the cleaning workers and directing them if needed. Marble flooring , celing bore beautiful designs on them. Every pillar well painted and dust free . Colours were all well maintained. Every idol within the temple was so well decorated. Even the donation boxes are well designed. That time I realised how environment colours your mind and mood.
On our way out , we were given the typical prasad that I have been having from everyone who visited Tirupathi, rice and milk and the ladoo.
We sat outside and had some prasad . On our way out we visit kuber(lord of wealth) temple. Not many temples have Lord Kuber's idol too nor have I ever visited a temple devoted only to Lord Kuber.
And then we were back to the daily routine .. bugs, fixes , configurations, coding, but somehow today I did not get a dragged feeling most software labourers get when you are required to work on a weekend to meet the deadlines.....you did not promise.