Seems just like a few days ago, I remember standing in queues for almost everything at TIRUMALA, only this time it was indefinite. Ever since I got hitched 3 months ago I have been trying to check the next thing on my list, a trip to Tirupati with my new family. My grand mother's untimely(or may be timely...) death delayed our trip. Finally we were there on the ever increasing-in-number, countless (3550) steps that spiral across the 7-hills from Tirupati to Tirumala. What amazed me more than anything was that even during so called off-season(June-July) there were so many devotees that too on the steps. Even more astonishing was that people/devotees were applying gandham-pasupu-bottu to each step and some were lighting karpooram on each step, hats off to their patience and Bhakti. As for me I realized that I too had a hip and also was happy that it didn't have a mouth or else I would have been a victim of extensive verbal abuse from my hip for testing its patience, practically standing for 12 hours at a stretch! Shakira was right!
