A Visit to the Goddess

It was about a year before that I had thought of writing this blog but I couldn't get around to it. The blog is about the Vaishno Devi trip that I made last year with my family. Throughout the trip I couldn't help but feel that I was searching for the Goddess that was said to be residing in the middle of the mountains that could only be climbed after a painstaking journey (if of course, you chose to walk on foot which by the way, we did). I was with my mother, brother and a family friend called Navjot Singh Sidhu (a very young acquaintance, not to be confused with the hyperbolic indian commentator). The trip took about four days to complete. We braved an exhausting train journey, a bumpy bus ride across the foothills, strange monkey gazes coming from what were real monkeys (no racism intended), smell of horse-dung and she horse-dung and most remarkable of all a walk up and down the mountains (thinking of Sissyphus here...) that lasted for no less than about fourteen hours. I was not required, nor were the people with me, to exercise for the next one month. The long walk to freedom...oops...to the Goddess was enough. My mother had to be literally dragged along by me so that she could make it in time down the mountains in time to catch the return train. Boy, you should have seen the look on her face. We had it captured on phone. The same lady who was super-excited to meet the Goddess in her official abode now didn't seem to see the point in it for all the exhaustion that she had been through. Inspite of the pain being endured, she had refused to ride on the horse or fly her way to the Goddess as she felt that the horse or the pilot might just steal the divine mother's blessings from her, the rightful claimant of the same. And you know how it is with Indian mothers, they can't be convinced about anything once they have made up their minds about something. So all our reasoning was in vain.

Throughout the trip, I was taken by the epic work God had done with the natural scenery there. If the Goddess had to have a grand abode somewhere, this had to be here, I thought. My mother told me some legends they have about the place. How Goddess Durga used to play along these mountains when she was a child. And I tried to imagine what it must have been like seeing the young Goddess play around this mammoth of a nature's beauty. I could see that there were a considerable number of people who had made their permanent homes in these mountains doing farming and so forth. I wondered how different their life must be from us urbans who find ourselves living in the deathly hallow of a maddening, noisy and sometimes monotonous world. They sure must have their problems. But what a compensation just the look of this place must be to them, I wondered. 

The most interesting part of the trip of course was when we entered the Goddess's cave. Quiet an ancient looking place that! Heavy with the smell of Puja smoke around and drowned in the noise of the chanting and prayer of the people present. And what a queue! More than you would find in a Justin Bieber concert. Seriously. And the queue didn't seem to move either. But when it finally did and the moment came after a walk of about seven hours, a train journey of around 12 hours and an infinitesimal amount of patience that was exhibited, we were asked to move on after getting just a glimpse of the Goddess for what was no more than a second...Imagine that!! Honestly, that hurt. I wondered what all the trouble was endured for. The people coming here say that they visit the place to get the darshan, the Goddess's darshan. But if they knew that this is how long their darshan would last, would they do it? 

Strangely, I think that they would. And this is a conclusion that I have been able to draw after what has been a year. All that time taken, all those steps walked, all that looking around in search of the Goddess and the faith that a meeting with the Goddess, even if momentary, would be a blessing and redeem them in some way, counted. 

I am a big fan of Kabir. He says, 'Sai mile sukh hoy'. It means that a meeting with the beloved is the greatest happiness of all and that nothing comes close to it. Nothing else can suffice as much. You can pray from your home, look for the Goddess inside you, but going there, meeting her in her abode, that is something else. And I did feel to be in the presence of some high power when I was in the Goddess's cave. As though, she were somehow physically present there. And that whatever you prayed for would be heard straight into her ears. That was something. And when I look back, it was worth all the trip made, all the steps walked and the ride taken. 

Hail the Goddess!