The
Priest who Wrote his Own Horoscope
The vaadhyar is a Hindu
priest who conducts ceremonies and rituals after death, helps in offering
tarpan, officiates during weddings and performs many rituals during the naming
of babies or thread ceremonies and various other religious functions. He was
and is integral to the life of a village. The vaadhyar service is now available
in cities too through the internet. The one in my village during my childhood
went by the name of Hulugundi Vaadhyar, Hulugundi being a village in Hassan
district from where he came.
Many Hindus desire to visit
Kashi (Varanasi), Haridwar, Rishikesh and Badrinath and the other dhams before
leaving this earth, hoping to reach the gates of heaven. They visit the temples
at Kashi and bathe in the Ganga and bring back an urn of Ganga water to their
homes. Hulugundi Vaadhyar sensed this powerful, almost primordial, urge of the
Iyengar community. He also knew about their orthodox lifestyles, vegetarian
habits and self-imposed restriction of not eating from restaurants. That was
probably his moment of epiphany.
Some 65 years ago, he
launched a comprehen sive tour package for Iyengar pilgrims to Kashi and other
holy towns. He hired a bus, stocked it with provisions and utensils, and even
had Iyengar cooks from the village. For a reasonable fee, he took men and
women, mostly in their late 50s and 60s, to the holiest of holy Hindu shrines
from Kashi to Badrinath.
He was adept at conversing
in Hindi because of his mastery over Sanskrit, he knew the distances and time
needed to travel from one location to another, the hundreds of dharamshalas for
free night halts (hotels were, of a course, not an option), and every minute
dec tail of the various pilgrim sites, the religious t rules, regulations,
timings and rituals of temr ples, the contact numbers of the priests in p
temple towns and so forth. He addressed the apprehensions of t the simple
village Iyengars, who were all farmers. He was also their guide as he was adept
in Hindu mythology and folklore and could recite stories and shlokas from the
Puranas about these temples.
Over the years, Hulugundi
Vaadhyar perfected the busi ness venture. The bus would start from Bengaluru
and, along the way to Kashi, visit many holy places: Ahobila Mutt, Nashik,
Srisailam, Allahabad, Mathura and then onward to Kashi, Haridwar, Rishikesh and
the four dhams of Badrinath, Kedar nath, Yamunotri and Gangotri. He took care
of every logistical detail and hospitality need end to end. And he brought them
back after 45 days.b The “Vaadhyar tour package“ was part of the bucket list of
the Iyengars of these villages. Over the next 40 years, till well into the I
late 80s, Hulugundi Vaadhyar ran his pilgrimage venture. He took l hold of my
imagination as a child. The Vaadhyar probably sowed h the seeds of my aviation
ventures and gave wings to my dreams.
The author is the founder
of Air Deccan
ETM20MAR16
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