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Friday, 19 June 2020

Temple Run 2

Once we had settled down that the Temple visit on Saturdays will be like this - I pick her up, wait outside for couple of hours(with Tea, Cigarette and Pink Floyd), once she is done with the pooja, we had breakfast (Yet another story) and I drop her back to her place.

This routine continued for couple of weeks but I became impatient, not because I had to wait outside, but she had to endure a lot to enter the temple the queue was so huge every time. I needed to find a quick, made easy and fast technique to get her inside. On the third Saturday of our visit, I decided to check out the surroundings of the famous Kalkaji Mandir and figure out a short cut route.

Enter 'Narayan', a solitary man who sat on a high altar just opposite to a small gate which led to the interior of the temple. A gate which only opened to the trustees and to people who gave a outright donation of more than 500 bucks to the head 'Pandit'. I observed Narayan for some time that day and figured out that he had a key to that very gate and if I figured out how to bribe him, her wait time would reduce from 2 hours to a mere 10 minutes! That was something I wanted because it meant two things - one, she had to endure a bare minimum queue and Secondly we could spend some more time over breakfast. 

Now came the tough part, how to bribe the guy?

I spoke with him for good half an hour that day I came to know everything about his family and his hometown. Trust me I know more about him than his wife! The kind of indirect sales pitch I carried that day was enough for him to give me the offer to enter via the gate by paying a bare minimum 50 bucks! Too much of a bargain in return for a lot! 

I told this to her and the next Saturday she entered the temple via Narayan's wild card entry. I never entered for I feel that she will pray enough for both of us and also I simply believed in her too much to believe in anything else. I did enter once (another story better never said). I waited beside Narayan every time for her to be back, and every single time she looked even prettier. I could just sit watching her face for an eternity or maybe more! 

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