I read Aditi’s post about devosanal atyachar; I was helped to write this post. Thanks AS :P
We moved to Chennai, away from home, but always proud of the fact that we got a house in a very posh area, Adyar. We were so thankful to the fact that everything was so near by, be it grocery, bakery, malls, etc. Though I am not a very religious person, I was grateful (more grateful were by parents and my in laws that there was a beautiful temple right in front of our house ;P) that due to the temple it always felt safe, there was security for the temple, there was a liveliness around the area. Whenever my parents or Amit’s parents praised our house, to anyone and everyone….the temple was the highlight of it all!! They were in awe of it.
Just a few days ago, it was the temple’s 15th birthday, that’s when we realized we were actually older than the temple :P . Earlier we had a notion that the temple was quite old! Well there was this huge board put up right next to the gate of the temple. It listed the time table of the ten days celebration programmes which would be held right in front of our house! I knew what was coming because as it is the temple celebrated innumerable days, by blocking our path to enter our home, we had to request the police to let us go inside the blocked “Temple Zone” explaining him with all sorts of actions that we lived inside! But this time it was even bigger than anything happened before. The following day I returned from office on my scooty to notice the Temple zone area extended till the end of our street. I somehow managed to enter inside, but to my amazement what I saw was ….there were thousands of people sitting right in front of our building gate. Some were sitting on chairs; others were sitting with a mat on the road. There were policemen patrolling everywhere. There was no way that I could ride my scooty inside my building! I asked the policeman, he instructed me to park it anywhere I could find place outside the Temple Zone! I got really upset. Well but I had no option but to listen to him, I parked my scooty at the nearest spot I could manage to grab and walked towards my building….I saw a plasma screen and a projector put up outside the temple for the people who couldn’t fit in inside the hall…a woman was singing classical songs loudly ….as I reached the main gate….there were people standing near the gate, some were sitting on it, some were taking support of it to stand. I went near them; no one even realized I intended to go inside! I requested in a very stern way (I know it was less of a request : P…but I had returned from office, also I was holding 3 carry bags, in which were vegetables and some grocery, helmet, my Tupperware Tiffin kit and my purse, it was getting heavy to hold minute by minute)
I reached the third floor, exhausted and irritated, unlocked my home…kept the bags on the sofa, drank some cold water, and called Amit to let him know….so that he got prepared for the situation he was going to face…:P What I strongly feel is people are welcome to celebrate anything and everything as long as they are not causing any inconvinience to anyone. Also, I am not against being religious, but going over board over anything is a bit too much……what I most of the times observe is that people visit temples more because of the fear in god than the faith. God is a friend not your boss who will give you promotions and perks if you are good to him…….god is more than all this….he is also inside your home….inside you too….if you wish to see him….you need to peep inside you ….not outside…
