Shegaon

A blog from yours truly after a long long time. Well, to write something decent one needs some peace of mind and when you are in the middle of a job change, peace of mind is the last thing that one has. Yes, after 9 1/2 yeas in an organization, I finally changed jobs. It is something I never imagined I would do, given the kind of risk-averse person I am. Also, given the kind of recession the world is in today, I think I managed to find a pretty decent job, that too in my home-town. Coming back to my hometown is something, I myself would have never imagined when I left home 10 years ago for my Masters. Anyways, here I am, almost full-circle, back at least for sometime to the home I grew up in.

Now, my better-half, who is much more pious than me, wanted us all to visit Shegaon, which is a small shanty town in Vidharba, Central India. Shegoan happens to be the home of the Late Shri Gajanan Maharaj, a Saint of the late 19th and the early 20th Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gajanan_Maharaj gives some details about him. He has been attributed to numerous miracles including, "giving a fresh lease on life to one Janrao Deshmukh, lighting the clay-pipe without fire, filling a dry well with water, drawing sugar cane juice by twisting canes with his hands, and curing leprosy of a woman." (Quotes indicate straight cut-paste from Wikipedia). He left his physical body on the 8th of Sept 1909 and his samadhi and some of his last belongings can be found in a huge temple.My wife, her parents and my father all happen to be devotees of the late Shri Gajanan Maharaj. I, for one am not really religiously inclined, but am not totally agnostic either, so I had no real reason to refuse to accompany everyone, given that the trip was planned on a weekend.

So, here we were boarding the famous Maharashtra Express. Don't let the word "Express" in the train's name fool you, for the train is by no means an "Express" and it stops at stations that no express train worth its salt would dream of stopping. On our way to the Railway station, my father-in-law told us that we were visiting on "Ekadashi", which has some special significance for devotees, all of which we had all been blissfully unaware of till now. It also happened to be Friday night and Saturday was also supposed to be Bakri-Id. In short, we had to be prepared to face the brunt of multitudes of the Indian public who use the Railways of India for close to 12 hours.

The train journey started of rather uneventfully, but it probably was just a lull before the storm. Given that we were travelling 2nd Class, we had gotten our own bedding, which we now put in place to ensure that we got a good nights sleep. Having done that, we all duly went to bed hoping to have decent nights sleep to be able to brave the long day ahead of us. But that was not be. On one of the stations en route a lot of people got onto our coach. They were I believe talking in Tamil. They tried entreating the ticket checker to some-how get them some seats, but given that there were none, all that this resulted in was a lot of chatter for no reason. After this two people from this group started having some deep philosophical conversation in Tamil. My mother-in-law, who knows some Tamil, wanted to give them her piece of mind in their language, but then, I guess "Discretion got the better part of valor". People were continuing to stream into the coach at the many small stations that this train stops. Finding no seats, or rather having reserved none, people were actually now sleeping on the floor. Soon the entire train floor was occupied with people sleeping. If this was not enough, some people were also sitting at the feet of people sleeping on berths, with valid tickets. My father was the victim of two such people. At about 6:00 am in the morning, one guy sitting very close to where we were sleeping (rather attempting to sleep) got for God-knows-what reason, the strange desire to call up his mother. The conversation he was having, was certainly not for public consumption, since he was talking about his marrying his girl-friend and his mother not quite agreeing to the proposal. The guy was pretty animated and probably did not realize that he was being heard by the entire coach. Some part of the conversation, would have been a perfect fit for a Bollywood block-buster. Some guy finally got annoyed and shouted out, " Why don't you get a loud-speaker?". It was then that he realized his folly and shut-up. At about 7:00 am these folks got down and some semblance of normality returned to the coach. At the next station, more people boarded the train and once again chaos reigned. The toilets, which were close to our seats were by now stinking. People were standing, some people were sitting where they were not supposed to, utter chaos reigned. There was no way we could use the toilet. We could even find our footwear, which we had removed when we went to bed, with great difficulty. Enduring all this we finally arrived at Shegoan at like 11:45 am like 45 minutes behind schedule.

Shegoan is a pretty small place in comparison to the cities that I have dwelled in. Rheine, where I stayed in Germany, might come close to Shegaon in terms of population and city size, but then Rheine is Germany and Shegoan is India and that too rural India. So auto-rickshaws will carry 10 people when they are supposed to carry only 3, the roads will be ridden with pot-holes, open drains on both sides will be over-flowing. After every 50-100m there will be a heap of garbage. All this was very apparent in this town as well. We took two auto-rickshaws to the temple premises. The temple authorities have a facility for lodging and boarding for a nominal fee but given the rush, we were unable to avail of the facility. My Father-in-law and I scouted out some hotels close by (or guest-houses as they were being called). After finding some to be too expensive for the duration of the stay and others with either a poor toilet or no ventilation, we settled for two rooms and decided to share them three each. The hotel owner agreed to provide us with hot water. So after a glass of sweet milk tea and a hot water bath we were all set to visit the temple. The temple premises has two parts. The first part, called the “Dhuni” is basically the place where Shri Gajanan Maharaj left his physical body to attain salvation. It also has the bed, on which he actually did so. The second part is the actual temple, where he was laid to rest. There is actually a temple of Lord Rama right over his final resting place. The story goes that Shri Gajanan Maharaj had actually indicated where he should be laid to rest. A “darshan” to pay respects was going to be a long 3 hour wait at his final resting place. So we decided to visit the “Dhuni” first, then get something to eat and then pay our respects to the final resting spot. The temple premises was a stark contrast to what Shegoan actually was. The floors were sparkling clean. There were people who were constantly ensuring that. People where chanting some mantras. The staff was entreating the devotees to be quiet, but they were having limited success with that. In fact, this is one thing that eludes me. On a visit to any church, one is stuck by the silence that surrounds you. A silence that will make you introspect, think hard about your life. But, silence is generally not something one finds in Hindu temples. I know that there are a lot of exceptions, but this place with the number of people was certainly not one of them, atleast not on that day. Maybe on a less crowded day, it might be much queiter and nicer. As we approached the points of key interest, the spot where Shri Gajanan Maharaj took Samadhi and the bed where he did so, there was some amount of pushing a shoving around by the staff to ensure the crowd keeps moving. Although, some amount of it is inevitable, I feel this could have been done in a more polite and quieter manner. In any case, having finished off with the first part of our “darshan” we found some lunch to eat, simple stuff that gave our bodies the much needed energy.

Lunch over, it was time to get in line for paying respects to the samadhi of Shri Gajanan Maharaj, for which we had to get into a long queue. The queue itself was about 3km long and went all the way into town. Here once again the stark contrast between the town and the temple was visible. While drains over-flowed in town and there were heaps of garbage strewn at regular intervals, the temple premises itself was I daresay swanky. Nothing signifies this better than the fact that there was an open drain that flowed right near the temple and one could distinctly smell it as one entered the temple. Once you enter the temple there were altleast three large rooms full of barricades (for lack of a better word), with seating facility, that ensured that folks did not break the queue and also ensured that large number of people could take the darshan, without being disappointed. One got to witness the immense faith and devotion of the people in queue, each one uttering a mantra in unison. The patience of the devotees was immense. I wish India could utilize this devotion to better effect. It goes to show that laws and a constitution probably is not quite right for us, what we probably need is some force that will enlighten this devotion and faith for the good of this country. Big words from a lesser mortal like yours truly. Anyways, after close to two hours in queue we finally reached the spot. The place is magnificent and has a statue of Shri Gajanan Maharaj at the spot. Exactly above it there is a temple of Lord Rama, once again pretty magnificent. We must have walked close to 5-6 km for this. The agnostic part of me said “ Is all the effort worth it?”, and the spiritual part of me said, “There must be something in this place that makes so many people come to it repeatedly, with such great devotion and faith.” So probably yes, there is indeed something, something invisible that makes all the effort worth it.

On our way back we visited AnandSagar, a theme park run by the temple authorities, which reinforced the contrast between the village and the temple. The fountains, the park, the computerized food-stalls, makes one feel, “ I am in another country”. If the temple authorities feel that creating such theme-parks will enable ordinary people to forget their, day-to-day hardships, I think they have been immensely successful. But, I believe the people will be immensely more grateful to the temple authorities, if they help solve some of their day-to-day issues like good clean roads, clean closed drains and access to good schools to just name a few.

After some sumtuous dinner and a taste of the famous kachori, we started our return journey. I left the place with mixed thoughts, awed by the faith and devotion of the people and my own family, slightly disappointed by the fact that the town could have been so much better. Will I visit again? I probably will, just to witness the same devotion, but I hope to visit a changed Shegaon.