US aspiring devotees doing ‘pradakshina’ at the Chilkur Balaji temple.
Faith can do wonders. From an unknown temple, the Balaji temple at Chilkur village on the outskirts of Hyderabad has become famous as the “visa temple” and is attracting youngsters with an urge to fly to greener pastures abroad.
The sudden fame thrust on Lord Venkateswara as the new incarnation of ‘Visa God’ has spread far and wide and such is the power of faith that 80 per cent of visitors to the temple are youth. On an average, 8000-10,000 students visit the temple in the hope of securing the elusive but highly sought-after US visa. On their first visit, the hopefuls have to do 11 pradikshanas (rounds); after the visa, they have to return to do 108 pradikshanas.
On an average, daily 500 youngsters fulfil their vow. There has been no impact of the global recession especially in the US on the number of students who come to the temple praying for visa, according to M V Sounderrajan, chief priest at the temple and a former professor in Osmania University.
A firm opponent of the commercialisation of worship in temples, Sounderrajan tries to downplay the ‘Visa God’ status, saying Balaji grants many other wishes too and not just visas.
R Akhileshwari, Sunday Herald, March 1, 2009
It shows how desperate the ‘brilliant’ Indians wants to get out of ’super power’ India and immigrate to Western world.
Thats every human beings right to escape from hellhole aka india
India is no hell hole.The thing here is that we are highly competetive that is our population is really high.2 lakhs ppl write the CAT exam to get into IIMs.The thing here is that in many ‘Western countries’ the people living there are not actually natives.For eg In US b4 the europeans came in there were only native americans.So initially the europeans migrated to US ,killed the natives and took over the place.Then during the gold rush many europeans migrated to the US.Thus the place bacame dominated by whites so when (as is usual in human societies) these ppl came to dominate that place.What i am trying to say here is that europeans got a chance to migrate.Now if we put all the migrated europeans in europe then the population would have probably exceeded indian population then it would have been another hell hole.US is much bigger than India with a much lesser population.
So this is the only way we can migrate….Not the way the earlier ppl did (killing natives and taking over the place)