Religious at Shirdi

One common complaint that most parents have with their Generation X kids is that most of them do not believe in God, are atheists and would rather spend their time going to discoes and listening to Bhangra beats than visiting a religious place once in a while. What they don't realize is that somewhere in the rap loving, salsa dancing hearts of their brats is a feeling, which might not be devotional, but is certainly not atheism. My trip to Shirdi with my college friends is an extremely good illustration of this fact.

Let me start at the beginning. In my college our weekend started on a wednesday night, giving us "Friday" blues instead of "Monday" ones. We had been having a rough time at college so one tuesday we decided that come what may, we will take a break and go somewhere, anywhere far away from our college premises. Lonavla, Mahabaleshwar, Shirdi, lots of ideas were thrown around. Finally, surprisingly Shirdi was the chosen spot. There were many reasons behind this choice (overall cost being a major one, college students you see..:D). Whatever the reasons may have been, we decided to go to Shirdi that Wednesday and be back by thursday night.

The best part of the trip, (I am not ashamed to admit) was that it was completely unplanned. Wednesday evening, immediately after classes, we caught a bus from our hill down to civilization. On reaching the city, we mde our way to the station in order to plan our trip ahead. At the ticket counter we discovered that the only train which would take us there was at 1 30 at night! It was barely 10 pm so we had loads of time to kill. All four of us, me, Padma, Nikhilesh and Rohit discovered that we were famished. We went to a number of eating joints to while away time. Good Luck cafe, German Bakery, Comesum, all were covered in that one night.(Yes, those extra few pounds are because of that night only, huh..:D)

Around 12 30 am we made our way back to the station. We managed to find ourselves sleeper seats in the passenger train we were travelling in. Then started the actual journey. We enjoyed the train ride to the fullest. Singing songs, playing card games, pulling each other's legs, the calmness of the night after the hullaballoo of the city was an amazing experience. We even sat on the steps of the train gate (Jab We Met revisited...:D) and enjoyed the scenery passing by us in a whirlwind. Unfortunately for me, I was tired and zonked out at some 3 am. The next thing i knew it was 8 am and we were about to reach Shirdi.

The station was some 45 mins away from the main Shirdi temple. After getting fresh at the station, we hired a three wheeler. On arriving there we realized that it was Thursday when the rush at the temple was at its maximum. But we just went with the flow. Surprisingly, things worked out well for us (good for our nerves that we didn't know at that time that Sehwag was also planning to make a visit the same day). We easily got into queue, took some 40 mns to reach the main idol and had completed our darshan in a total of one hour. till it was 11 30 by the time we were free from the temple and were ravenous again. While eating lunch we found out that the only train which would take us back to Pune in time was at 1 30 pm. Considering it was 12 30 pm already now began our race for time. Running helter skelter we made our way back in time to catch the train back, barely.

The trip back was a ghost of our trip to Shirdi. There were many reasons for it. We were all tired out with one sleepless, long night and a journey full of excitement. All of us took turns at sleeping and passed the time. However, our adventure did not end there. The train was a chuk chuk in the true sense. It was 2 hours late than its scheduled arrival time and we realized that we will miss our last bus back to the hill. Also, we were all almost broke. Counting all our pennies we discovered that we had just about enough to hire a cab and get back to campus.

Finally we reached back to our campus, safe and sound and also strangely at peace. There was a strange sense of achievement that all of us felt at accomplishing the goal we had set out to achieve. For me, it was like foraying into unknown grounds and coming out victorious. Then, of course, at the end of it there was this smug feeling that Generation X is not as atheist as our parents would like to make us feel. Three cheers! :D