8/17/2016 0 Comments Chilkur Balaji, Visa BalajiAfter the exhausting and awesome darshan of Padharpur. My friend called and said there may be a chance that we can go to Tirupati. Now, I am not for missing that for anything. So here was the plan, get back to Hyderabad and then leave the same night for Tirupati by car which is about a 9 hour car journey.
There were some temples at Solapur that we did in the morning and made our way to Hyderabad. One of the temples that I had wanted to visit was on the outskirts of Hyderabad was Chilkur Balaji, owing to a vow that I had to complete. My introduction with this temple was made in 1998-99, I was applying for a Masters in Germany, and my Visa had been rejected two times. I was sharing my woes with my friend Madhusudan, complaining that if the visa gets rejected the third time I won’t be able to ever go to Germany. I was visiting Hyderabad at the time to attend Madhu's wedding. He suggested that there is a small temple at the outskirts of Hyderabad which is also called visa temple because of the number of Visas that get granted to the devotees there. Me and temples have an old love affair. In all the madness and after a lot of trouble to my friend, I was able to get a car to myself to go to the temple. I did 11 pradakshinas, came back and applied for the visa, I did do my Masters in Germany. A few years later when I came back, I did my 108 pradakshinas at the temple. I remember it was not easy, very time consuming and my feet were burning and I couldn’t walk for a few days without wincing afterwards. 3 years ago, my brother had applied for a Work Permit in Ireland. He had done his MD and he was eligible for a specialist visa. However the Irish Govt. was not very favorable to offering specialists visas. They entertained doctors but not specialists. However my brother found out that this is the case after having submitted the application. He started fretting a little and getting anxious with the thought that if the work permit would not come through he would have to lose a year. At this same time I was going to make a trip to Tirupati, vie. Hyderabad. So I asked him, if he would like me to pray for his work permit. My condition was that if it is granted he would have to himself come and do his 108 because it was going to be too hard for me to do them. He of-course agreed and I went to the Chilkur Balaji Temple I remember with Jaya. A few weeks later his work permit came. Mom and dad went to do puja but no one had done 108 parikramas since then. This was weighing heavy on all our minds and I wanted to get them done in the interim till my brother can make his way to the temple himself. So since I landed in Hyderabad I had been wanting to go to the Balaji Temple at Chilkur. The temple on the banks of Osman Sagar is one of the oldest in Hyderabad. A story goes that, a devotee who used to visit Tirupati every year could not do so on one occasion owing to serious ill health. Lord Venkateshwara appeared in his dream and said, "I am right here in the nearby forest. You don't have to worry." The devotee at once went to the place indicated by the Lord in the dream and saw a molehill there, which he dug up. Accidentally, the axe struck Lord Balaji's idol (covered by the molehill) below the chin and on the chest. Surprisingly blood started flowing profusely from the "wounds", flooding the ground and turning it scarlet. The devotee could not believe his eyes. He could not believe his ears when he heard a voice from the air saying, "Flood the molehill with cow's milk." When the devotee did so, a Swayambhu idol of Lord Balaji accompanied by Sridevi and Bhoodevi (a rare combination) was found, and this idol was installed with the due rites and a temple built for it. Sri Balaji Venkateshwara, the Pratyaksha Daiva in Kaliyuga, is thus available at Chilkur to shower blessings on His devotees who for any reason are unable to go to Tirupati. Unlike the Balaji temple at Tirupati though this temple has no hundi and neither accepts any money from devotees. This is one of the special Temples in India with no green channel or privileges for VIP's. This temple is also privately managed and governed and has stayed out of government control. The unique feature of this idol is that lotus flowers are held in three hands and the fourth hand is in a position towards the lotus feet which signifies the doctrine of Saranagathi. During a visit the devotee goes through the usual rituals of prayer, including 11 circumambulations of the inner shrine, and makes a vow. The 11 circumambulations represent the secret of creation — 11 means "1 soul and 1 body" — uniting both with devotion and full determination to fulfill wish, dedicate on the lord; there is no second, everything is god. Once the wish is fulfilled devotees then walk 108 times around the sanctum sanctorum. In the 108 circumambulations, 1 represents the Existence, Almighty, God (Paramathma, Balaji in the minds of the devotee), 0 represents Creation (Illusionary World, Jagath) and 8 represents the time Human Body takes to come to this universe-8 months (Jivatma). So I wanted to get to the Chilkur temple and do the 108 parikramas before leaving Hyderabad a good thing in retrospect because I am not going to be able to go back to Hyderabad and am flying out from Bangalore. The problem was the paucity of time, we had to travel 350 Kms to Hyderabad and then 3-4 hours for 108 parikramas and then a 9 hours journey to Tirupati to get there in the morning. We started at 1:30 amazingly we reached Chilkur Balaji temple at 6:30 and covered 350 Kms in only 5 hrs without any special toll roads. When I entered the temple there was literally no one. I started doing the parikramas really fast. Then the aarti started and even the few people walking stopped. I couldn’t believe I was able to finish the parikramas in one hour fifteen minutes as opposed to the four hours last time. I was able to maintain a wonderful pace and my feet were blistered but I was able to do it. The rare darshan of the aarti, I was able to get the bhog and when I entered the temple it was absolutely empty, so I could stand there for half an hour. I have never seen that temple so empty and it was also Purnima that day. I had been fasting for Satyanarayan puja. The Satyanarayan puja took specially long this purnima at home so when I finished my parikramas and called home to find out they had also just finished the puja. Narayan is really hard to please but it seems like he is slowly according me with a little grace these days. I was able to meet my friend at 8 pm to start our journey to Tirupati. With some more Narayan adventures to follow.
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Shrinka Agrawal
Spiritualist & life coach she is a bold, intuitive & gifted individual. Her experience & knowledge of the oral Hindu traditions in chants and the ancient Indian texts provide rare opportunity to help better oneself and affect the course of events in one’s life. Archives
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