11 May 2008.- On a work to Mumbai, this was the my first Sunday and my wife was keen to
make it to all places.Helped by our host we were going around Mumbai, enjoying the empty roads and getting a full view, which one cannot imagine on a week day.Mumbai was one city which always kept itself closed on Sunday unlike its other metro counterpart where IT thrived and killed this culture. We hurriedly took snaps of some monuments and made it to the Mahalakshmi Temple.This was my first visit here.
Being a weekend, a good number of devotees made it for darshan. As we started walking towards the temple, we were blinded by many umbrellas and ad boards of pundits etc. We saw that the pathway is divided into two halves.One half for people going in and one for people coming out.Again there was seperate queue for ladies in left and gents in right. My friend and i joined the gents queue and my wife and her friend joined the ladies queue.As we reached the footsteps, we were asked to leave our chappal. Left with no choice we left it at the footstep.After fighting the crowd, we got our darshan and sighed a relief.
Beating the noon heat, we walked out of temple to realise that all is not over here.We could
take our chappals after initial fight, as it was left near the partition. However the ladies had left their chappal at the other end. The only way we realised was to get back into the incoming crowd and fight for your chappal. After some desperate moments, the ladies could only recover one pair and other was missing.Nobody realised the problem they were causing to old people or children but were focussed on finding their chappal.It was an utter chaos.It took nearly 1 hour to fight and take our chappal . On way back, we started telling all devotees to leave the chappals in the shops or outside before getting into queue.Fuming i came out and asked the temple administration that how come such a famous temple does not have a free chappal stand for devotees or atleast somebody informing them to leave chappal before joining the queue.
The man took me and showed board at entrance which read, "Remove your shoes here". Then i noticed the problem.An umbrella carrying some ad agency banner on top was blocking the board and nobody was there to guide through a mike system or in person.What a chaos?
make it to all places.Helped by our host we were going around Mumbai, enjoying the empty roads and getting a full view, which one cannot imagine on a week day.Mumbai was one city which always kept itself closed on Sunday unlike its other metro counterpart where IT thrived and killed this culture. We hurriedly took snaps of some monuments and made it to the Mahalakshmi Temple.This was my first visit here.Being a weekend, a good number of devotees made it for darshan. As we started walking towards the temple, we were blinded by many umbrellas and ad boards of pundits etc. We saw that the pathway is divided into two halves.One half for people going in and one for people coming out.Again there was seperate queue for ladies in left and gents in right. My friend and i joined the gents queue and my wife and her friend joined the ladies queue.As we reached the footsteps, we were asked to leave our chappal. Left with no choice we left it at the footstep.After fighting the crowd, we got our darshan and sighed a relief.
Beating the noon heat, we walked out of temple to realise that all is not over here.We could
take our chappals after initial fight, as it was left near the partition. However the ladies had left their chappal at the other end. The only way we realised was to get back into the incoming crowd and fight for your chappal. After some desperate moments, the ladies could only recover one pair and other was missing.Nobody realised the problem they were causing to old people or children but were focussed on finding their chappal.It was an utter chaos.It took nearly 1 hour to fight and take our chappal . On way back, we started telling all devotees to leave the chappals in the shops or outside before getting into queue.Fuming i came out and asked the temple administration that how come such a famous temple does not have a free chappal stand for devotees or atleast somebody informing them to leave chappal before joining the queue.
I request all persons to make note of "Chappal System" in Mahalakshmi Temple to enjoy their temple visit.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment