Your Friendly Philosopher & Guide

We drove down to the temple, and the temple was crowded as expected. I am sure it will attract more people in days to come, and would fetch more money than Tirupathi for sure. The initial experience of shutting people in cages reminded me of Tirupathi. But then I think there isn’t any better way to handle animalistic Indian crowd.

After some decent waiting the doors were opened. The walk towards the main shrine was interesting. It is a star shaped pathway, which is surrounded by lush green gardens, where the sayings of this 32-year-saint are displayed. They are good to read. The main shrine is made completely of Gold, with the main deity as lord Narayani.

The darshan was good, and after the darshan I realized that anything is surplus is ugly. Gold looks beautiful only when there is a contrast or it just looks like a yellow metal. May be that is what the saint intended to convey.

One of my clients had told me that you could meet the saint, who performs puja in a normal temple, which is located opposite to this Golden temple. Very few knew about this fact. Hence out of 10,000 and odd people who came to see the Golden Temple, only 100 and odd people came to the opposite temple to meet the saint.

We waited for some 2 hours, and witnessed the saint performing puja. The puja went for an hour or so. And it was part of the schedule that after the puja was over he would sprinkle some holy water on the people who attended.

He called 2 people on to the stage and gave them blessed lemons. And came down to sprinkle the holy water. On his way, he looked at me, stopped near me, gave me a cosmic smile, and asked - so where are you from. I said from Chennai. He smiled again, sprinkled water and moved on.

In fact I was a lot flattered. Out of 200 and odd people, he spoke to only 1 person and that was me. More than the temple, I liked his cosmic smile – may it will have some bigger meaning, which will manifest in the near future!