Category: Religion

  • No more holy days…

    Last week had a very holiday theme to it. Technically, there was only a day off, but the particular day was different for different places..and work places. I had the day off on Wednesday and D had an off on Thursday. Well, a far cry from the good old days, when the Puja holidays was an eagerly awaited annual event.

    Its appeal lay in the fact that school books could be ‘legally’ laid aside for a few days. I still remember treating the occasion with all the seriousness it demanded, and even including comics in the book-ban. As i grew older, non-school books were gently eased out of the process. So were many accessory rituals like the early morning bath and going to the temple.

    Zoom to now, when the single day off is just another holiday to me. D does try her best to retain the last vestiges of an occasion that now exists only in the memory archives. But the link to the original event is all but severed.

    There are two losses that i mourn for. The first is of character – the character that differentiated and defined each of these holidays. The character that made sure each of these holidays created specific memory associations (our memory, i think, used folksonomy long before web 2.0) that would last decades after the holiday was last celebrated in the way it was meant to be. The memories now created are just another multiplex movie and a few ‘upto 50%’ off deals. I think we are celebrating more, only we have forgotten what we’re really celebrating. (pardon the generalisation) The second is of the innocence – individual more than collective. From the child who had oodles of faith and belief in the sanctity of the rituals he undertook, and derived great pleasure from it, to the cynical adult who battles hard to regain his faith, albeit in the form of spirituality.

    until next time, keep the faith

  • The Art of Giving

    There’s a theory about the internet I read somewhere that i keep bringing up in different contexts. It goes that if collective consciousness is the path to God, then the internet makes a great first step. To be in touch with the cosmos is perhaps the ideal state in spirituality, and while the cosmos does extend a lot beyond our planet, we could definitely start with being connected here first. And it is in this regard that I rate the potential of the internet to be very high.

    Every time we log in to facebook or orkut or twitter or any social medium out there, we come across people and things we didn’t know about before. It gives us perspective and changes our perceptions about who and what we are. And that reminds me of another quote that I keep using, from the Matrix series “….I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see purpose. I believe it our fate to be here. It is our destiny…” To me, that rings very true for the web. There is a reason why a tool like this has been brought into the life of arguably the smartest species on this planet, and I for one, believe that its role is to further our evolution and bring back things that were lost somewhere along our ‘progress’ – compassion for fellow beings, and the willingness to contribute to things that lie beyond our selfish interests.

    And with that, I end my droning foreword, and would like to introduce to you, this website I came across – Rang De. No, this is not about Bollywood, but about adding color to others’ lives. I’d written about it in my other blog, and finally registered last week. The idea is to extend micro credit from socially conscious folks to the financially disadvantaged. And mind you, its not charity – you get back your money, with a modest interest.

    So I’d like to tag you guys on this. If you’re reading this, I request you guys to check out the site, and write about it (if you have a blog) or spread the word in any way you can. I have just used it for the first time, and  just got a report on how my investment would be spent. So maybe you can start with a small amount and see how it works for you. But we do so many trivial tags, maybe we could do one for what seems a noble cause. It will hopefully connect us and give more meaning to lives – ours and others’.

    until next time, add some color

  • You have a message

    … and the song that was playing on TV when i switched on the comp to check the feeds happened to be Joan Osborne’s ‘One of Us‘, a personal favourite, mostly because of the lyrics. And one of the feeds that popped up first linked to this, a mail from God.
    Now its very rarely that I have posts that links to things that make a good forward but there are times when that cool line from The Matrix Reloaded, which i keep mouthing regularly, is made believable – “We have not come here by chance. I do not believe in chance. …….. I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see purpose. I believe it our fate to be here. It is our destiny.” And so, I thought i should do my bit by spreading the message.
    The reason I like that mail is because it keeps things simple, and brings up a point that I’ve increasingly come to believe in – the overbearing influence of money, on society.
    Before you write it off as a pro-socialism tirade, I do believe that as a tool, money has immense amount of benefits, but when the accumulation of money becomes a purpose in itself, we become the tool, and that’s what’s increasingly happening.
    Meanwhile, on a sidenote, the message also perhaps answers austere’s recent question. Death is quite possibly God’s way of saying ‘long time, no see’

    until next time, counting my blessings

  • Faith

    So, how did it all start off? An understanding that there was a higher power that controlled destinies and the world around beyond any level that a man could aspire or imagine ? A need to connect to this entity and lay out the easiest way to do so? A way of bringing together people and making them work towards a common goal? A physical platform to relate to the belief in a metaphyical entity? Perhaps, and perhaps not.
    Somewhere in between, came the ones who claimed to have gone much closer to the entity than their peers. And they formed the higher power through prisms that were based on their individual realities and expectations, and their peers, who at best, were a confused lot, followed. Faith became religion and from a thought, became a set of practices, and from us, we became us and them.

    And that makes me wonder whether He, any He, feels the need for religion. And brings me to an unintentionally hilarious but profound statement from an old Malayalam movie, where the character states, in all seriousness to a priest, ” In religion, and in sex, I don’t feel the need for middlemen” 🙂

    until next time, profundity or profanity?

  • Heaven and Earth

    The church wasn’t a large one. But we reached early, and so its emptiness gave it a magnificence disproportionate to its size. The empty pews and the stained glass added to the effect. The bride and the groom exchanged rings and took their first steps into holy matrimony. It’d been a long time since I’d been to a church wedding and thus it made a great experience.

    And then the choir started, a sound that shattered the alternate silences and the monologues of the priest. A sound that transported me into a different plane, and gave me a glimpse of what they might have envisioned when they made religion and with its temples and churches. Yes, you didn’t need a special place to pray, you could do it anywhere, but this was a place of tranquility that would help man to converse with his maker. An atomosphere of serenity thatwould help him to hold on to his faith amidst the chaos around him.

    Meanwhile, less than a hundred metres away stood a massive structure, a mall in the heart of Bangalore. The huge population that thronged to it made it seem much smaller than it actually was. But, as soon as they entered, they were transported to a world where they could forget their worries and shop and dine to their heart’s content, a world of opulence and harmony. A world that sucked them into its chaos, but made them happy.Two worlds, separated by a few metres, and separated by a distance that each one must travel on his own.


    until next time, to be worldly and wise….