Highway to H-

 My trysts with rule breaking when I was younger were quite restricted. I was an obedient child, who would usually be seen with her head down , never toeing the line. 

I remember my mother freaking out when I decided to walk home from school instead of waiting for her to pick me. (In my defense, I had friends who lived close by that also walked to school, and my mother usually left me in school for hours until she could complete her chores. I had absolutely nothing to do. Not even a book to read!)

I also remember bunking college ONCE (Undergrad. we were a very obedient class. The day we bunked, our professors cheered). And I also remember being sent out of class in disgrace once (Also undergrad. I was feeling rebellious) 

 So you can imagine my utter delight during my recent trip where I met two girls who craved rule-breaking! 

Tats and I had gone to see RB before her big day, and in true RB fashion she shooed us out saying we would be bored by the rituals and all the sitting around and watching her. She enlisted two of her cousins to "entertain" us. After the usual awkward lets go out by ourselves and explore - no no we do not want to impose, it turned out that RB gets her awesome personality from her family. 

Without preamble, Varsha asked us what would we like to do. Tats and I had taken a look at the various offerings and wanted to explore caves or probably go shopping.

We ditched it all to go to a temple on a hill. The legend goes that the Goddess Shakti was split up into pieces and that all the pieces fell from the heavens. We went to see one such piece. (I do not know which). 

The plan was to take two wheelers and zoom away. My fear for anything that overly depends on the laws of physics to maintain momentum and balance notwithstanding, this had to be shot down because Mr.Kitty was also with us (his friends all having ditched him, he was forced to spend the day with Tats and I, the two non-Telugu speaking folk out of all the people he could have hung out with) 

We spent an hour looking for cabs which then turned to autos that would take us there. (I think throughout the country, catching an auto is a LOT more easier than catching a cab, regardless of what cab service you thought of using)

 Now Varsha is this courageous heart who loves to bend rules, and Madhu is the calm sarcastic thinker who points out obvious flaws in the bending rules plans that we came up with - and gives solutions on how else we can bend them.

So yeah - TLDR? We broke rules to skip lines . To visit a temple. I highly doubt we'll be given entry to heaven after we leave our mortal coils behind. Unless of course Varsha and Madhu decide to give us a leg up from wherever they happen to be. Or unless we get brownie points for being so eager to glance at the Goddess that we were willing to break the rules? I do not know how does the system work. 

Before even entering the temple, we had to give up our sandals and phones. Varsha wanted me to dump all phones in my bag, and pretend like I wasn't carrying a sackful of phones. I thought I would confidently pull out a water bottle to the security lady that asked and make a big show of how only water bottles could fit in my sling-bag. But sadly these ladies were onto us, because it was my first bout with rule-breaking and I probably looked nervous as hell. They asked us to dump our phones. Thankfully I caught on, and began pretending I was a tourist who had no idea what was going on. We sadly traipsed back and waited in line to give up our phones. I suppose Varsha and Madhu must have realized by then, that we were a bunch of dumb people who really sucked at having fun. 

Our second bout of rule breaking came up while entering the waiting area for the tickets. (We had to wait literally EVERYWHERE. OMG this was like the bumper prize of all govt offices). There's apparently a rule that all girls must cover up with a Dupatta no matter how TRADITIONAL or ETHNIC a dress these girls are wearing. 

Because y'know, wearing a whole goddamn Pattu Pavadai, and being 18 years old is not good enough, and "oh no, you're a WOMAN, you ought to wear a bedsheet, because although we pretend we aren't regressive, we are regressive AF, because religion boohoo, and we'll sexualize underaged CHILDREN because tradition boohoo" (Dear God I was so PISSED at the time, and my blood boils even thinking about the incident now). Thankfully I was beginning to understand what was expected, and yours truly is never caught dead without a trusty long scarf (What if there's dust? what if there's the rain or the sun? or what if I just dont feel like showing my face?? It's the same principle as the hoodie really) and I skipped through my checkpoint, doubled back and tossed Madhu the ugly thing, so that she could show how traditional she was, while ruining the look of her absolutely adorable floor sweeping Pavadai. So yay! one disaster averted!

This temple, like most popular Indian temples, had this elaborate system of waiting in lines. Long LONG lines, that just stretched out for hours together. Our initial hurdles cleared, we were told that there were two tickets - 100/- and 300/-

Varsha immediately told us that it didn't even matter what ticket we bought, we were in for a long wait UNLESS -  and here she glanced at us hoping we caught the hint - we decided to improvise. We the so called experienced old folk agreed to whatever she said. So we bought our 100/- tickets and took the lift (which I am sure meant that we were skipping most of the initial lines) and then ended up standing behind this super long queue. Varsha and Madhu wanted us to eat at RB's place so they were in a hurry. Apparently the cook was quite famous in their circles and his food was supposed to be really good. But hurry where? 

To the 300/- rupee queue which looked super short. While we were waiting in line , there came yet another check point where we had to show our ticket. I guess this is for the people who usually switched lines right at the beginning. Thankfully we made it through. And that's when Varsha pointed out that the entry to the 300/- line was right there. Unguarded for the moment. The numbers above were written in the Kannada so I understood it just fine. But hey, we were tourists there, so I was gonna pretend to be illiterate, and we slunk away. We were thinking this was it, we were through! And then, right at the doorstep, just before we could enter the temple, we were caught. It turns out, we had to show our ticket yet again, in case people like us decided to switch lines. I was quite confident by now, and we decided to pretend we had lost the tickets. That worked for about 2 minutes. Then I noticed that the line could allow multiple people through at the same time. That meant we didn't even have to show the tickets we could slip away without anyone being the wiser. I tried talking in Hindi loudly to show how clueless I was, and maybe, just maybe it might have worked, because as I rambled on, my hope was that my friends would quickly leave, the line would begin progressing to wherever it was that we were going to and I could show the tickets we did have. 

We didn't count on the line to stop moving. Nobody let us go anywhere! We were truly caught and I kept pretending we were tourists so they opened the gate to the 100/- line where some auntie  lost her mind and yelled at us for thinking we were better than her - she who payed her rightful way through and stood in those long long lines. I kinda felt bad for her. Varsha took this auntie's words to heart and kept muttering to us about how the lady yelled. 

However, we were in!! In a record one hour of mad dashing around, rule breaking, passing chocolates to everyone (everyone was starving by now. I always carry chocolates while traveling and I know P is gonna tell me that I am a grandma for carrying water and choci, but that's stuff is important!! Besides I am old now, I suppose being called a Grandma is kinda my thing!) 

We spent some time sitting outside, wishing we had come earlier when the weather was a lot more pleasant and we weren't all hungry. On our way out, we pushed Mr.Kitty to get us the laddoos, while we hunted for a vehicle to get us back. 

The way back was interesting (I had only taken those large share autos in Chennai when I was little), Varsha and Madhu began telling us about their other adventures (these girls!! why weren't they there when I was studying! I could do with a few rule breaking adventures of my own!), their plans for the future, their life in general. I felt like I had made new friends. I had stories of my own, like Tats had when she strode into the boys hostel, and I wasn't brave enough to follow her (Y'all remember this one? The guard was out I think).

 And obviously the food was to die for!

 

Until next time, 

DragonRider