This narrative of the visit is entirely from my memory, so it’s quite possible that the order of events may be misplaced. I’m also not going into great detail about the temples we visited, as I don’t want to rely solely on memory—facts need to be accurate. The one thing I can say for certain is that we had great darshans at all the temples and felt deeply blessed and peaceful.

Returning to Mangalore, we prepared to take the evening train. Since Mangalore is famous for its polis, we bought plenty of them to enjoy during our journey back.

Before continuing, I’d like to mention that we had visited Tirupati before our trip to Mangalore. We were fortunate enough to book rooms in a guest house, and we had one of the best darshans there. This was the visit when we did angapradakshinam (circumambulating the temple by rolling on the ground). Starting early, around 3 a.m., we were able to sit in front of Lord Balaji for quite some time. It was a heavenly experience.

Now, back to our return journey from Mangalore. Being tired, we went to sleep soon after boarding the train. But when we woke up in the morning, we were met with a shock. The train’s shutters were closed, and we were told that we were not even halfway through our journey. Disaster had struck India—Rajiv Gandhi had been killed in a bomb blast. It was a deeply sad day, and with heavy hearts and anxiety about our travel, we slowly made our way towards Chennai, arriving late at night.

No public transport was running due to the situation. We, along with many others, moved to a large hall on the first floor of the station, where we sat on the floor and dozed off. In the morning, we were fortunate enough to find an auto-rickshaw, though we had to pay double the fare. But that didn’t matter—what was important was that we reached home safely.

In all, it was an unforgettable trip.

Continued in 166. Testing Times - Part 1