Jaya Vijaya episode & the consequenceFrom vikraminside
In that episode, sanaka brothers are the visitors, here the devotees are the visitors. In such case, can the devotees follow the footsteps of munis sanaka, i.e., cursing those who is pushing?. This is what struck in my mind and queried, whether the sevaks will the reap the benefit of doing kainkaryam.
I remember, about 35+ years back, we were fortunate to go closer than today and had comfortable dharshan. Because of the swelling in numbers of the visiting devotees, things have changed drastically.
I am not talking of simply saying, “jaragandi”, which is acceptable, without touching. They used to pull the hand and push the devotee to the side. On two different occasions, my elder brother carrying kid and my father in law were pushed like this, lost their balance and managed from falling. This time, they keep their hand at the hip and push, which is atleast safer.
The administrators, join two or more queues at different locations. These devotees, once allowed to join other queue, inherent weakness, run to join. Fortunately, so far nothing untoward has happened.
I understand there is a need to manage the queue, so that all the visitors slotted for that day gets the dharshan. I have noticed the statistical display at Thirumala, mentioning 19.7 lakhs devotees visited during the month of March 2022. It works out to about a whopping 2.32 crores / year. I just estimated the time one gets for dharshan based on this, considering 20 hours of dharshan / day and three lines running parallelly for dharshan. It works out to 3.4 sec / devotee. Considering the distraction due to sevaks’s action, height of the other devotees in front etc., this time will be still much less.
Many of these visitors plan atleast two months prior, several used to put money in hundi and save (at their home) exclusively to go to ThiruVengadam. Whether such devotees will get satisfaction with such treatment and less than 4 secs of dharshan time?.
Probably, due to the available space, agama rules, Devastanam board which is a big unit, is unable to provide longer dharshan times. If something is done in this angle, the devotees will be happy, they have the facilities.
I have told Him, why can not He improve this for the benefit of the visiting devotees. May be, only Divine intervention will help.
I left the shrine, thinking that, it is not how long I could get dharshan is important, it is that I have exposed to Him and He has seen me matters.
Sri Venkatesaya namah!
adiyen