WHEN ‘PANCHI PETA’ SAVED THE DAY & SERPENT KALIYA CAME DISGUISED AS A ‘PUNDITji’

I had the bitter experience of having to choose a Delhi-Mathura-Vrindavan-Agra bus tour operated by certain ‘Sharmaji ‘ of  a Travel House , Delhi in the first week of October 2014.

Instead of the Volvo bus I had booked a couple of seats in , we had to make do with a vehicle of different make.(I know, Sharmaji is well within his rights to do so , given the  'Terms & conditions' printed below the ticket)

Although the tourists were allowed to spend just an hour and a half at the Taj Mahal & Agra fort, the organizers were generous in providing ample time at non-descript food joints and handicrafts / curios shops.It was indeed disgusting to think that you took all the trouble travelling from one end of India to Agra only to find yourself having a fleeting glimpse of one of the seven wonders of the world. Since my wife was hell-bent on buying lots of ‘Panchi Petha’ which her colleagues had clued her up on prior to the trip, we really had something to remember Agra by.

I still recall a bemused foreigner watching my fellow unruly countrymen scrabling for food at a food joint where the bus had  pulled up.The break-fast & tea were exorbitantly priced,to say the least.

The truncated trip skipped Mathura on the pretext that the Punyabhoomi was already ‘closed’ by the time the bus reached there.

Granted, it is not the fault of the tour operator that all I could see in Vrindavan were dirty canals and stray pigs besides the labyrinthine streets lined with modern buildings.Let alone a sacred garden of Tulsi,  there was no sign of the much anticipated serenity and old world charm.The main priest of the temple(where Lord Krishna rested after thrashing the Serpent Kaliya) seemed to be more vicious than the serpent Kaliya as he was seen having words with and even shouting at a hapless devotee who demanded to hasten the procedure a little bit.They punditjis in the temple also demanded hefty sums for performing poojas on behalf of the worshipers.

In fact, the punditji ,the guide who led us to the temple had earlier showed us from a distance an ancient temple built by the King Man Singh and later destroyed by Mugal Emperor Aurangzeb , but did not bother to take the tourists to the beautiful structure;apparently because there was no monetary gains to be made in the name of an abandoned shrine.

In hindsight, I feel it would have been better , had I checked in at a hotel in Agra for one night and toured the city on my own .