The Fortunate Folks

The recent demise of a great spiritual leader, Sai Baba of Puttapathri brought lots of emotions and tears from all around the country. From daily labourers to multimillion dollar businessmen, people from every walk of life – the middle class armchair theorists, film celebrities, sportsmen, politicians and even the prime minister mourned his death and paid homage to his lifeless body. Even though some of these newsmakers had to attend the funeral out of moral obligations, there were a whole lot of men who flocked around the place due to their belief in the leader. Many more paid silent homage and shed tears for their holy Guru at their homes. These are people with such great faith in a single being – human or God, whoever he may be. What is interesting is their unflinching faith, the hope that we could see in their eyes, the trust that Satya Sai Baba is the messenger of God.
Not only in this particularly instance I am wondered at the great trust and hope , but also the general hope people keep in their respective Gods and the great length of pain and suffering they undertake in satisfying the needs of their heart and thereby making themselves closer to their God. For the past few days I’ve been witnessing scenes of a holy Hindu gathering to do bhajans at Kamarajar Hall, Chennai. The crowd that gathers is shocking and the animated dances people do in their own trance amazes me. Such huge faith in their God makes them forget their pain, anger, sufferings, pleasure and needs and surrender themselves to their God. How many times do we see seventy and eighty year old men and women standing up from their seats, cheering the singer and dancing to the merry rhythms of the tune? These are the results of pure Bhakti that these people have in their God. This is just an example and am sure that each religion will have a similar story to say. Really, these are the fortunate folks who have such unshakable faith in a being.
Many philosophers of Hindu Dharma say that to experience the essence of God is a rare treasure and is not found by many. Only the fortunate few get such out of the world pleasures. This was repeated in the recent bhajans and my parents backed it too! So what about me? Actually I do support this! Only the fortunate few get such privileges. And if asked whether I belong to that fortunate few category, I am very disappointed in myself that I do not belong to that exclusive group.
Believing to God and praying to god is a wonderful experience. Being a very strong believer of God for almost twenty years I know and do understand the high ecstasy and beatitude people experience in such a practice. When lonely, God gives support; when sad, He gives strength to carry on your sadness till it becomes light; when an injustice is being done to you, He calms you down and reminds you that justice shall prevail in the end; and when all hope is lost; he stands with you and comforts you in your heart. Thus the uses and advantages of believing in God are many. And naturally the unfortunate people like me are stripped of such advantages.
Being made clear that I have no belief in God, people may get the impression that I hate God or I don’t want God to exist etc… But it is exactly the opposite. I fervently wish for God’s existence. I crave for His presence and I am in constant search for signs that insinuate His presence or His identity. After twenty years of being a God believer something hit me hard on my head and made me see the real stupid world and made me realise the bold, raw and daring truth about God. Though brain seems to acknowledge and accept the idea, the inner mind doesn’t want it to be true. At times of distress, unconsciously my mind drifts to God and does a silent prayer even before I try to counteract with the thought to stop it.
On a recent Tirupati trip, one and half months back, which I made only for the sole reason of being an adventurous journey, one of my friends casually said,” Never play with Lord Balaji, he will definitely make you suffer at some point, will you make think about the prank you played with him and will make you resent it”. Again, such an extreme faith. Bravo!! Got touched. For a moment, I wanted to believe his words without further questions and accept them passively! How good would be a world with God!!! Hence I made this small bet with God at this juncture. I prayed, or to say exactly, made a challenge with Lord Balaji for three things. One year time period was given for accomplishment of any one of the three prayers. If atleast one of the three prayers comes true, I would gladly and definitely start believing in God and would further reach the temple by walk itself. But if it doesn’t happen, then I would have to remain in the unfortunate group and be damned forever! One and half months, has passed and still ten more months to go. Let’s see who wins in the end. Hope God wins! Keeping my fingers crossed!
At times, it is better to remain blind and exist in our own virtual world rather than opening our eyes and getting disappointed with the reality!

Man Vs God - Who created Who??

I, Venkatesh, an orthodox brahmin iyer of age 17 was on one of my family tour/outing/pilgrimage with my family to tirupati when my uncle reminded me that Lord Balaji was a very ‘powerful God’ and so I should pray to Him devoutly. I didn’t put much thought into it and did as I was instructed. I prayed to the Lord for everyone’s well being, for good marks in twelfth and to get a good college. As my life progressed, I was attracted towards the philosophy propagated by Adi Sankara, the Advaita philosophy. I started pondering over it and found that the crux of the philosophy was ‘Aham Brahmaasmi’, ‘I am God’!! Being a science student, I was always interested in the cosmic space that existed out of the world; the galaxies, nebula, black holes, star clusters etc which led me to the big bang theory and documentaries of Stephen Hawkins, the theoretical physicist. At this juncture, my mind started comparing the two incomparable – philosophy and science; Advaita and Big bang theory since in essence, both were similar with minor modifications in each. What advaita referred to as Brahman, Big bang theory called it as the start of the Universe – The big explosion.

Almost five years after the tirupati trip I went for another ‘family tour’ to a different shrine where I heard a similar statement being said. About the powerfulness of God, the existence of different Gods with different forms, different characters who even fought each other at some instances. The mind which was pondering over big bang and advaita for a long time, suddenly found the idea of God dumb and stupid. During the course of five years, so much had occurred which had shaped the way in which I see and understand happenings around me. The only question that remained was, “Why did the great Adi Sankara who had such immense knowledge of proposing a version of Big bang theory two thousand years ago without any scientific proof, also bring in the concept of Smartha and Shanmatha tradition of worship?”

Actually the answer was very simple and was connected to the way of Indian lifestyle and religion. Ancient Vedic Religion and the predecessors of these folks worshipped Nature. They had the habit of worshipping anything that was useful to humans and helps them. From the air we breathe in (Vayu Dev) to the energy source of all life on earth, the Sun (Suryanarayanan), everything is worshipped and deified as God. Some of them are: rivers (Ganga, Yamuna etc), food providing plants, elephants (Ganesh), monkey (Hanuman) and even mother Earth herself (Bhooma Devi). The interesting thing to note is that according to Hindu Dharma and Advaita Philosophy whoever the God is, He/She must always come under the reign of the Siva (in Saivism) or Vishnu (in Vaishnavism) or both (in Advaita).

So this brings up another question. What about the other Gods like Rama, Krishna and a whole lot of human-like Gods. They are probably just humans who due to their great deeds and the high respect they earned among their people were praised, their actions were exaggerated and in few generations they were apotheosized and believed as the incarnations of Siva or Vishnu. Rama would have probably been a very good king and his rule should have been so just that they still keep his reign as the gold standard and is referred to as ‘The Ram Rajya’. Similarly Krishna would have probably been a very naughty child from a rich landlord family who in his life turned out to be a very cunning diplomat who managed to change the tides of the great Kurukshetra war! Thus in a similar manner every person who had done good, appreciable deeds have been pushed to the status of God in the course of time.

So my hypothesis is that, the Indians who had the habit of worshipping anything that interacts with the humans and after many generations deified them as Gods, ultimately found the fact that all the elements surrounding and interacting with them always followed a strict ground rules within which they were supposed to exist. These undefined rules should have probably confused them and those unnamed rules were hence called Siva (in Saivism), Vishnu (Vaishnavism) or The Brahman (Advaita) under whom all the other Gods surrender and are answerable to Him alone. Interesting thing to be noted is that in Saivism and Vaishnavism, it was made sure that the presence of Lord Siva or Lord Vishnu be made inaccessible. Hence Siva was given a place in one of the highest peaks of Himalayas near the Mansarovar Lake and Vishnu was given a place in the deep trenches of the Indian Ocean. Had it known that such scientific progress would be made to conquer the mountains and oceans, ancient vedic Indians would have probably shifted both their habitats to other planets or stars!!!

Science on the other hand, by experiments and hypothesis ultimately found the secret behind all the rules within which ‘they’ existed. All such rules were compiled together and a name was given to them collectively. And it’s called ‘PHYSICS’, the laws of nature!!! So my ultimate hypothesis is that Indians who tried to apotheosize every form of nature and every great human who existed during those times also noticed that they were all controlled by and they obeyed according to some unknown rule which they weren’t able to identify and hence named them as Siva or Vishnu, but in reality the rule was nothing but Physics.

Voodoo

(Tried synchronizing the lines with the song from Godsmack: Voodoo)

The Shaman comes by to bring you death,
When you really want to live up your life.
Never will you ever smile through your heart,
And your soul is lost due to your deeds.

The shaman sits by the moonlight
With an effigy in his hands.
Piercing pins through the straw toy,
To torture the soul he wills.

Breathe in Poison, Dream of daylight,
Wish you meet death than this.

You'll be the one who cries out of pain,
When the pangs of hot iron enter your soul.
Never will you ever wish for a life
That I just gobbled into my own.

Sucking life out of your soul,
Draining blood out of your heart,
Body shaking out of pure pain,
Being broken and teared.

Dread for next life; where torture follows,
Pray for the death again.

You'll be the one who cries out of pain,
When the pangs of hot iron enter your soul.
Never will you ever wish for a life
That I just gobbled into my own.

The Silver Moon

One of my Mundane scribblings:

Staring at the Milky Sea
Lying on the golden sand
Gobbling up the infinite beauty
Of the white silver moon.

Happy was I,
With a single twinkling star.
Never knowing the truth,
That it is a death star.

So lonely was I,
With the burn by the star
And the haunting memories left behind,
Stripping me of all emotions.

Then came the silver moon,
With all her untainted glow,
And no one saw me,
Except the silver moon.

Staring at her twinkling eyes,
Awed by her golden strands,
Gobbling up the infinite beauty,
Of her silver moon face.