Some gods grant riches and others good luck, but one deity in India offers a much less nebulous fortune to his devotees: tickets to a new life in the US.
More than 1,000 Hindu faithful visit the Chilkur Balaji temple each day in the belief that the divine presence inside can bless worshippers with a successful visa application. Those seeking a shot at the American Dream are instructed to pray for their permission to travel abroad, and to return to give thanks when they receive it.
“Every single member of my family who is in the US has come here,” said Satwika Kondadasula while walking around the temple’s sanctum. The 22-year-old said that moving to New York was a longstanding dream. She will head there this week to start her master’s degree and says she has the deity Balaji in part to thank. “I got the visa because of my capability of course, but I have luck of god as well,” she said. “I definitely believe coming here really helped me out.”
Photo: AFP
Balaji is considered an incarnation of Vishnu, one of the key gods of the Hindu pantheon known for upholding the cosmic order of the universe. The temple bearing his name on the outskirts of Hyderabad was not always known as a conduit for international travel. Its elderly priest C.S. Gopalakrishna discovered in 1984 that water spontaneously appeared before a shrine to the god when he walked around the perimeter of the temple’s sanctum 11 times. Word spread and people began visiting the temple to offer wishes for happy marriages, children, or successfully navigating the cut-throat admissions process to India’s top colleges.
‘BLIND BELIEF’
Over the decades, devotees came to believe the shrine was particularly effective helping Indians seeking to leave the country — so much so that it came to be locally known as the “visa temple.”
Photo: AFP
Pilgrims emulate Gopalakrishna’s 11 laps around the temple sanctum, returning later if their wishes are filled to circumnavigate it a further 108 times as an expression of gratitude.
The ritual demands precision. Visitors chanting Balaji’s name in unison keep track of the longer walk with the aid of yellow sheets of paper marked with numbered boxes given out by the temple. Gopalakrishna says that divine intervention is not guaranteed, and his god helps those who help themselves. “You should work hard,” he said. “Balaji will help if you have blind belief in him.”
‘DREAM LAND’
Photo: AFP
India is now the world’s fifth-largest economy and still enjoys world-beating GDP growth, but hundreds of thousands of its citizens still leave the country each year seeking better opportunities abroad.
While the diaspora spans the globe, the US remains the destination of choice.
The most recent census there showed its Indian-origin population had grown by 50 percent to 4.8 million in the decade to 2020, while more than a third of the nearly 1.3 million Indian students studying abroad in 2022 were in the US.
“America is still the dream land,” said visa consultant Sakshi Sawhney, who helps Indians negotiate the often perplexing paperwork needed to travel to Western countries.
“That is not going away anytime soon.”
‘BETTER POSITIONS’
Sawhney lived for a time in the US before returning to guide others through the process, and said she herself had visited the Balaji temple while waiting for her visa. While she does not tell her clients to pray there, she says many tell her that they had done so of their own accord.
Looming presidential elections have focused attention on the heights Indian-origin Americans have scaled. The mother of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was born in the southern city of Chennai before her acceptance to Berkeley for her master’s degree aged 19. The wife of Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president, Usha Vance, was born in San Diego to Indian immigrant parents with family roots not far from the temple.
“It is a great, inspiring moment. Indians are moving around the world and they are in better positions right now,” said Ajay Kumar, at the Balaji shrine. Kumar, 25, has returned to the temple to give thanks to the deity, brimming with excitement before his imminent departure to Tampa Bay, where he will work as a chef.
“America is the place where all my dreams will be fulfilled,” he said.
One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal. Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
You can tell a lot about a generation from the contents of their cool box: nowadays the barbecue ice bucket is likely to be filled with hard seltzers, non-alcoholic beers and fluorescent BuzzBallz — a particular favorite among Gen Z. Two decades ago, it was WKD, Bacardi Breezers and the odd Smirnoff Ice bobbing in a puddle of melted ice. And while nostalgia may have brought back some alcopops, the new wave of ready-to-drink (RTD) options look and taste noticeably different. It is not just the drinks that have changed, but drinking habits too, driven in part by more health-conscious consumers and