India, Jan. 26 -- Last week, a funicular train started its operation on the Haji Malang hill. Visitors can now bypass the arduous physical climb of about 1,500 rock-cut steps to and from the shrine near Kalyan. What took many hours will now take minutes. For those not able bodied or otherwise debilitated, it is a godsend. The news reminded me of the day when I climbed the hill last year. There's fit. There's Olympic fit. And then there's Haji Malang fit. On a whim, one morning, I decided to trek up the hill. In my first year after moving to Mumbai, I lived in Shahad, Kalyan. The first night I slept in my 19th floor apartment, I remember waking up in the middle of the night, groggily thinking I saw a massive blue-black cloud in the distance. In the morning, I woke up to clear skies and the majestic sight of the Malang hill, about 20 km away. All day, the elephant trunk of the hill was visible, and on rare clear days, even the contours of the shrine complex. In short, the saint was calling. I took an auto till the Mallanggad base, full of the bravado of amateur trekkers and a sanguine sense of being hailed by the saint. I started unthinkingly, navigating the little houses, shops and stalls that marked the unassuming beginning of the ascent. I knew the hill's height theoretically. Now I was about to learn it physically. When a hawker offered me the colourful walking stick she was selling to all pilgrims, I confidently declined. But by the 400th step or so, my legs began to marinate in tiredness. I started asking those descending the trail: how much more? I think some of them lied to motivate me: just half an hour more. I kept climbing. When I saw an elderly woman, easily double my age, with a bent back, sprinting up so effortlessly as if she was strolling in a park, I shut up. Meanwhile, a manic sort of Sahyadri green grew around us. The path, in parts, smelled of incense and goat fur. By the time the 700s came, the ascenders had become a tribe of sorts. We would climb, then sit and rest, buy and gulp down shikanji from the many stalls that dotted the ascent, then climb again. Passing each other so many times that soon we started nodding to each other, making tired and resolute faces by turns. We, the ascenders, the about-to-be-blessed. When we reached what is called the pehli salami, the first dargah (there are two before Haji Malang), the name of that saint appeared to contain, at first sight, an anagram of barkat i.e. blessing. This could only be a good omen. That's when I noticed what the ascent was doing to me. It was turning the trekker into a pilgrim. There is something to be said for the legs slowly tiring, the forehead perspiring, the having to sit, settle and gather your breath constantly, that makes the goal appear more and more sacred. What makes divinity is the path we choose to reach it. A brown cat crossed my way, grazing my leg, appearing almost munificent. When a boy skidded slightly on a step, all the pilgrims blessed him: aaraam se, dhyaan se, basa basa. We were in the 1000s now. Each step, a knee killer. It must only be that unmistakeable sense of barkat that kept me from turning back, from quickly reaching some self-vindicating compromise: too bone tired, too fat to be blessed. Kids galloped ahead. The saint sent a breeze to distract me. When I sat on the rocks to rest, I noticed they were polished smooth by centuries of pilgrims. And thousands of feet above sea level, this sight readied me for the last lap. Almost as a gift, the ground began to plateau. I was at the second salami. The saint's name and title, Sultan, made me wiki the Semitic roots of the word. Salata was 'to be strong', what the ascent had also asked from us. Malang was now near. A cavalcade of shops appeared. With his images, with baskets of marigolds and roses, with books carrying his stories, and with gold stitched chadars to be laid over him in the sanctum. I was at his doorstep. I bargained for a chadar, and laid it over him. A priest thumped my head with peacock feathers. And somehow, all the tiredness withered away. I stepped out. Another priest asked me, in Marathi, where I was coming from. Because my Marathi was only a few months old then, I took particular pride in recognizing a form of kuthe in his question, and answered with glee. Near the base, I found an orange stone in which was embossed an image of a god who once brought an entire hill when asked for a single herb. He looked me straight in the eye and said: you know you will come again. Then he asked a question: when you do, will you walk, or will you just zoom up on the train?...