Last night, I attempted to take the bus to the Hindu Temple of Rochester, to attend Sankat Hara Chaturthi, a puja performed in honor of Shri Ganesha. The bus system here in Rochester is a bit of a mixed bag...it's cheap, on one hand, a plus for me since I can't afford a car, but you get what you pay for, in the form of confusing routes that don't really get you where you need to go sometimes.
This was hardly the first time I took the bus in Rochester - I live here, after all - but what ended up happening is I wound up on the completely wrong bus! In a semi-panic, I had to get off three, maybe four miles from my destination. I then had to walk the rest of the way.
It seemed like a Herculean (maybe Krishna-sized) task walking all those miles in a single hour, and my right foot protested incessantly in pain as a result. But I still made it there. And on time! I was certainly a sweaty mess when I got there, but I was still accepted at the temple to partake in the puja.
I brought this up on Facebook and a Hindu discussion forum, trying to make sense of what had happened. One forum goer had an interesting idea: apparently in India, there are special walking pilgrimages one can undertake called yatra. Oftentimes these yatra are pretty lengthy, and since it's a pilgrimage the ultimate destination is a Hindu religious place.
This forum goer suggested that maybe Shri Ganesha wanted me to undertake a yatra. I don't know if walking through an American suburb would count as a yatra, but regardless of where I walked through, the end result was the opportunity to worship Ganesha...so maybe it's not that far off the mark.
At any rate, I certainly feel I've accomplished something.
