Respect at the toll booth

This was in the 1960s.

My parents were very opportunistic. They chose that time of the year to pay the annual respectful visit – you may want to call that a pilgrimage, only about 100 km. each way though – to Lord Venkateswara of Tirupati-Tirumala Devasthanam when He was least likely to be bothered.

This was always in the second half of December when as reckoned by the Telugu people it was not quite so auspicious for a visit to the Lord. Yet, I can tell you we spent at least half the time of our stay in Them Thar Hills listening to shouts of “jarugandi”, not in praise of the Lord that would have got us bushels of blessings, but a respectful command to us to keep moving along the line. You were lucky if you got to see the Lord in His resplendent glory for a nanosecond. That was the crowd in the lean season for the Lord.

Now cut to the second decade of the current century; and, shift your pilgrimage to the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. The sanctum sanctorum is the array of toll booths along this supposedly fast road corridor between the capital city and the nearby village (what else will you call a center of habitat with mud-paved roads, no water supply, unreliable power supply and ever-lasting property disputes?). As per the news report (reproduced above) in the Times of India of October 9^th, 2012, the crowd at the booth matches peak season rush at the feet of the Lord.

That is not the only thing connecting the Lord and the toll booths. People have authorizations via smart cards and even old fashioned cash etc. to pass through the booths just as they do for the sanctum sanctorum to take a nanosecond look-see of the Lord to check whether He is OK. But till 5:30 PM on Tuesday (October 9) they had no one shouting “jarugandi”.

That changed at that appointed time; the lacuna has been plugged. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has drawn two Lakshman Rekhas, 400 meters from the “toll plaza”, one for each carriage way. If cars start lining up from beyond these two lines, they can skip paying the toll “indulgences”. True, the judges said nothing about “jarugandi”, but the expressway concessionaire, being a profit making venture, indeed one that is giving money to the government via the so-called negative grant, does demand “indulgence” payments. If it exempts one, it is potentially a free service for all. Then, whence profits?

The last I did not hear but certain to be hearing soon is that the profit making expressway concessionaire is hiring parking goons to push and shove cars bumper-to-bumper or even closer – as they do in parking lots in Nehru Place – within the “toll plaza” areas just so the Lakshman Rekhas are not breached, even if only barely so. As an aside, I suspect these people may have to carry certificates of training from the professionals in Them Thar Hills.

But, I also expect that the respectful command “jarugandi” will mutate into the non-respectful “jarugu”. If you want examples of such mutations, you need to go to particle physics – neutrinos mutate from one variety to another as they travel through space. So, this is what happens when you shift out of Them Thar Hills.

In the presence of the Lord God of Money, respect goes out the window, from the toll booth windows, whether in the Hills or on the plains.

Raghuram Ekambaram