Trip to Basara

I am thrilled to share my experiences today regarding the trip to Basara, which was meant for my daughter’s Aksharabhyasam. I had heard about Basara earlier from my husband so many times that many of his colleagues went there for their kids Aksharabhyasam. This ritual is believed to be a very good initiation for children education.

Basara is around 200 Kilometers away from Hyderabad and the transport facility is available via road and rail both. There are many buses that run after every half an hour from Secunderabad to Nizamabad. From Nizamabad, Basara is very near with several transport vehicles. If you have your own vehicle, you can enjoy even that journey.

We started our journey on 27th of March, on Ugadi day, in the afternoon after celebrating Ugadi at home. From our place, we caught the MMTS to Secunderbad. And from Secunderabad, we aboard the Devagiri express at 1 PM. By 1:30 PM, the train started running. My husband, my daughter Nandini (2 year 3 months old) and I were enjoying the journey. Meanwhile, I saw a person standing in the boggie and looking at me. After few minutes, I recognized that person that he is our Yoga teacher. I wished him and introduced my daughter and husband to him. After the conversation I came to know that he was travelling to his home town Nizamabad with his wife. When our yoga teacher went to his seat, my husband smiled and told me that my yoga teacher was looking at me from long time as if he knew me. Since I was involved in playing with Nandini, could not see him.

After having little snacks which we had brought with us, my husband and Nandini slept, but I could not get the sleep since I was taking dips in my own imagination. While I was lost in my own world, do not know when I got the sleep and we reached Basara. One more surprising thing happened, when I saw yoga teacher in Basara. He told me that even he could not visit Basara before in spite of staying so near to this place, and hence this time he made up his mind to visit this place.

We reached Basara by 5:30 PM. From the station, we hired an auto and went to Godavari river to take the pious dips. I am unable to find any word to explain the experience I had during taking dips. I then realized why saints frequently visit to sacred places and take bath in holy rivers.

My heart stopped functioning, my mind stopped thinking, I was not me, totally lost. This kind of happiness and feelings could not be explained in anyways. This has to be experienced by oneself. This is the knowledge which no book, no master, no one can make us understand, that is my belief. No happiness is equivalent to that experience. I took seven dips, and every dip brought me the unique experience, that is still live to me when I close my eyes. I can correlate this incidence to the poem written by renowned Bihari poet Vidyapati, who was a great Shiva devotee. There is a saying that he was so much devoted that even Lord Shiva appeared to him and served him as a servant. He was from Mithilanchal (Madhubani district in Bihar), where Maithili is the spoken language, and he wrote his poems in this language. I take pride in quoting here that I got the privilege to take birth on this land.

In one of his poems, he writes praises for river Ganga.

“Ki karab jap tap jog dheyane, janam kritarath ek hi sanane.”

This means that his life got fruitful after taking only a single bath in Ganga. He does not require to do any japa (Chanting God’s name repeatedly for some ideal number of counts) and penance.

With all the gratitude and happiness, we came to the temple to have the Goddess vision. We reached to the temple at the time of Arati at 7 PM. There was a curtain since Poojaris were decorating the Goddess that time. We and many other people were waiting for opening of the curtain so as to have the gracious vision of the Goddess. And, the curtain was removed, I was just stunned. Whether it is a statue or Goddess herself is sitting there, I was mesmerized. After arati took prasad and went to a nearby restaurant to have dinner. Then, we found a lodge to spend night at Basara.

Next day morning, 3 AM we got up and were ready by 4 AM. We went to temple for Abhishekam and pooja. By 8 o’clock Aksharabhyasam started for children which took nearly one hour to get completed. After this sanskar, we visited Vyasa cave where saint performed his penance. Again came to Godavari river for my daughter’s kesa khandam and taking dips. Then we completed our lunch and returned to the Basara railway station. It was nice seeing many people at the station whom we had already met in the temple premise. Now it was the time to depart from Basra. Our train came on the platform by 4 PM and we all aboard and took our places in it. On the way, it was a great pleasure for us to see so many colorful peacocks, and other birds that we saw for the first time. By 10 PM we were at home. Taking all the pleasure and remembrance of Basara and the journey, we fell asleep after having dinner.