Universe conspires to make things happen

This is a phrase I first heard from a friend of mine at IBM Kolkata (who incidentally is also a follower of this blog). It is true that if you desperately want something and you turn no stone unturned to make it happen then the universe will do its bit and make it happen. There are many instances where I recollected this phrase in my real life. I would like to narrate one such recent incident to pass on the essence behind this phrase.

Since Dec 2004 I wanted to visit “Sabarimala” (normal civil dress darshan). I kept postponing it till 2008. The Sabarimala shrine is open only for 2 months – from mid November to mid January and then 5 days a month for the rest of the year. In 2008, a group friends tried to co-ordinate dates to visit the shrine as a group, the effort soon fizzled out as some of the group members couldn’t make it. Towards the end of 2009, I was asked to relocate to UK and this forced me to complete few unfulfilled vows. Visit to Sabarimala shrine was one of them. A group of 4 finalised the date, but two had to drop out at the last min, that left two of us to go ahead and visit the shrine. We picked up the window of 5 days in October to visit lord Ayyappa. Our travel journey started in Hyderabad. After visiting Lord Venkateshawara on the hills of Tirumala by foot our journey to Kottayyam was planned by Kanyakumari Express which leaves Tirupati at 11:00 am and reach Kottayam next morning at 6 am.

The train was delayed by, stretch your imagination, 12 hours. I and Ravi reached Tirupati railway station at 11:00 pm and waited for this train on the platform for 2 more hours. The total delay was now 14 hours. We were worried a lot that our planning has now gone for toss. We decided to go with the wind and see if we could make it. As I indicated earlier, the shrine is only open for 5 days and our original plan was to make it to the shrine on the penultimate day. We reached Kottayam at 4:30 pm the next day and went out to see how we could reach Erumeli and then to the Sabarimala by the night. Every one in Kottayam was suggesting to hire a round trip car/jeep. However, we didn’t want to come back to Kottayam from Sabarimala. We wanted to go to Thekkady and then to Madurai before returning back home. The only choice left for us was to take a public transport bus from Kottayam to Erumeli. We were warned that since it was off peak season the frequency of the buses wasn’t good and that part of the journey being a ghat road, would take lot more time by bus than private hire. Left with little choice we started walking to the bus terminal from the railway station.

Some one in his mid 30s clad in a khaki shirt and white dhoti came from behind and asked us if we wanted to go to Sabarimala. We said “yes”. We told him we wanted to go to Erumeli and then to Sabarimala. He said he had come to Kottayam to drop some one and was going back to Sabarimala and was willing to take us to Erumeli, wait there for an hour for us to take bath in the holy Pampa river and have darshan of lord Ayyappa and visit two more temples in Erumeli, before we could continue our journey to Sabarimala. We were overjoyed, but didn’t reveal it to him, bargained on the fare and struck deal with him in a matter of few minutes.

The journey to Erumeli was very scenic as with most places in Kerala. The ghat journey was great with occasional stop over for a hot cup of tea with mouth watering authentic Kerala snacks. We reached Erumeli at 6 pm. Just as we were about to have holy bath in river Pampa, I got a call from a close friend and colleague - Jay from Hyderabad. He had planned to come with us but could not make it, so wanted to check how we were doing. He had been to Sabarimala many times and was well versed with all the places enroute. He advised us to visit three temples in Erumeli and then proceed to Sabarimala. With his timely guidance we had darshan of lord Ayyappa and visited the other two temples in Erumeli before continuing our journey to Sabarimala.

We reached the foothills of Sabarimala at 10 pm and bid farewell to the driver, thanked and paid him more than what we bargained initially. The river Pampa flows at the foothills of Sabarimala too. We took another dip in the holy river before starting our trek uphill. Jay called us again to check where we were and how we were doing. We told him that we are about to start our journey up the hill. He advised us to take enough water and glucose along with a torch as it might be dark over a couple of stretches on the hill.

20 mins into the hike, we realised the importance of Jay’s advise. The hike started getting steeper and steeper and we were loosing our levels of glucose very fast and had to replenish them very frequently. The clear sky, fresh air, water falls, an occasional pilgrim group returning back or on their hike like us and lots of shops open at this hour serving food, lemon soda, tea, coffee and the occasional rest area with planks are memories that will always stay with us.

We finally reached Sabarimala at 12:30 am in the night. We went to the pilgrim centre only to find that no accommodation was available and didn’t know what to do. Just then Jay called us again, this time to check if we reached Sabarimala. It was late in the night for him, but he kept track of us and was helping us at each step. When we told him that no accommodation was available, he gave us specific instructions to go to a particular place and meet a particular person who would help. We had slight difficulty finding the place, but once we reached that place, we were welcomed and shown a place to rest that night. We were very tired and needed this rest very badly. If not for Jay we would have had to spend that night with out proper rest.

The next morning, we woke up early in the morning, had darshan, and then called Jay to thank him for his timely help all through the journey. He suggested that we visit two more temples there, one of the temples has a ritual of rolling coconuts around and making wish for our loved ones, particularly children. We performed the ritual.

We had a sumptuous breakfast and then started our journey down the hill. This time it was more scenic in the broad day light. Lots of pilgrims were on their way back to the foothill as it was the last day of the 5 day window for October.

The journey continued... I will pick up the remaining part of the journey some other time. However, I will take this opportunity to highlight the theme for this blog post.

The universe conspired to make things happen for us at least on three occasions during this journey.

1. Man in 30s clad in khaki shirt and white dhoti comes from no where to help us reach our destination on time.

2. Jay, our friend calls us up, guides us at every phase of the journey and makes arrangements for our night’s rest sitting remotely in Hyderabad at such an hour when most of them would have gone into deep sleep.

3. All this timely help and co-ordination meant that we could complete our darshan of lord Ayyappa before the shrine closed for October.

Try and dig your memory for such incidents, I am sure you will find lots of them. The universe does conspire to make things happen. All you need to do is to desperately want something.

So strive for something so strongly that the universe is forced to conspire and make things happen for you.

Good Luck!