Most things happen in our lives quite spontaneously without any pre-planning. Even if we decide to do things after strategising a lot, certain supernatural impetuses prevent us from completing them. Things occur inexplicably on the whims and fancies of such forces.
My journey last month to Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konark has been just like that. Usually, I travel with some sort of planning and preparation, and mostly alone, as it gives me that indefinable freedom from the clutches of others. But to my surprise, one of my friends suggested to me that he wanted to go on a journey along with me, as he was scared to travel alone. I readily accepted his proposal with the condition that I wouldn’t be in a position to travel to places to which I had already gone.
After a little thought, he suggested Odisha to me and I immediately agreed. I booked our flight to Bhubaneswar on that day itself and also the hotels at Odisha’s capital and Puri. We reached Bhubaneswar around noon on that day and visited the ancient Lingaraj temple in the evening. The next day, after visiting the Udayagiri-Khandagiri Caves, the Museum of Tribal Arts and Artifacts and Rajarani Temple, we proceeded in an auto to the Asoka Edicts and Dhauli Giri from where one can have a view of the Daya river, on the banks of which the great Kalinga war was fought.
On our way, the auto driver Kirtiranjan Das asked us about the main purpose of our visit to his state, Odisha. I told him that we were there for the first time and that our main objective was darshan of Lord Jagannath at Puri and of course, visiting the Konark Sun Temple. Then he told us in his Hindi that Lord Jagannath had himself invited us to have our darshan of Him only then and therefore we had come there from a faraway place like Kerala.
He never bothered to invite us before, so we were never able to come before. Everything happens according to the wishes of Lord Jagannath. His words sounded to me like something out of the world and ethereal. After all, I undertook the journey without any preparation whatsoever and only because my friend was hesitant to travel alone. So I realised that what Kirtiranjan Das said was absolutely right.
Ajithan C K Email: ajithanck@gmail.com