Piligrimage (family tour)

  I went in search of God. To a place called Gokarn where Lord Shiva is supposed to be present. Well what did I find? Traffic jam. As they say in kannada, ಪಾಪಿ ಸಮುದ್ರ ಹೊಕ್ಕರು, ಮೊಳ ಕಾಳುದ್ದ ನೀರೆ ( ಅಥವಾ ಪಾಪಿ ಸಮುದ್ರ ಹೊಕ್ಕರು ಟ್ರಾಫಿಕ್ ಜಾಮೆ )
    It was a family tour, kind of. My son and his cousins wanted to go to beach. They convinced their grand dad and arranged the trip. We 3 sisters and our husbands went as baby sitters or rather teen watchers. But why Gokarna, you may  ask. Gokarna also has a beach. And on the way, we went to Dhareshwar beach as well.
    Let us come back to Gokarna. I feel for a temple town, it has far too many vehicles. Or may be most of them are tourist vehicles as ours was. On a road, which can allow one car only, there was a line of around 15 cars. Every time, we wanted to go to our lodge from the priest's house (where we were supposed to stay but could not as all the rooms were full and where we had our meals) and back, it took us 15-20 minutes which by the way is hardly 2 kms.
   And the temple. It was great. That must be one multi tasking God. One priest with his group of devotees, was giving the God Abhisheka from one side, where as another was putting flowers and other priest was performing arathi chanting mantras loudly and fourth one was making the devotees repeat after him some chants like " dhanam ,dhairyam, santanam, thissam , thatam , give me the lord." . There was hardly any place in the garbha gudi to stand. Son was complaining, Husband asked him. Wont you stand in such a crowd in a shopping mall so frequently. Son's reply was " In the mall ,they won't put hundred people in one room like this" . My rejoinder " hundred people and one God".
    My elder sister who most of the time is quiet, commented " Even if you have some illusion about God, all that will vanish if you come to such a place".
    Since the Garbha gudi was thus, the priest made us sit on a katte around him and performed some puja. All men had to have their upper torsos bare. They were supposed to remove their belts on the trousers as well. So there were chances of lower body also being bare. Somehow it did not happen. One basic question, why does God want men to remove their shirts when visiting him? Obviously not for visual pleasure, as I am very sure he will not enjoy looking at pot bellies. May be even he is worried about terrorists and wants to make sure that these men aren't carrying any weapons on them.
    So this puja was being performed. My question was if it can be medium distance puja, why can't we have instead have very long distance puja, from our homes and avoid all these trouble of travelling so far. I did not get any good answers. May be the signals won't be strong enough.
   Again son was asking his uncle, "Can't we bribe the priest so that he can finish the mantra chanting faster". And what mantras "अहम् काश्यप गोत्रोत्पन्ना हस्त नक्षत्रे जातस्य ---- नामधेयस्य " and so on. Does god need our name, nakshatra and gotra to recognise us? What are these some kind of primary key and secondary key in his database. Can't we just tell him "अहम् Look at me अहम् नमस्करोमि त्वं  आशिर्वदा " What better Id does he need than our faces? Or has he not implemented Iris Id yet?
    Anyway we visited the God. And for our transient beliefs he made us suffer with these traffic jams.
   The famous Om beach in Gokarna was really awesome. But children were grumpy as they did not get to go to water. They were grunmling we came here to find out the length, width and area of the beach.