While channel surfing on TV I have often paused, like most of you I am sure, at one of those
channels where a very driven (for lack of a better expression) kind of a man, a Hindu guru or a
Christian evangelist, is delivering a fiery discourse.
Sometimes screaming at high pitch, sometimes whispering in falsetto, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, pausing for effect......like an actor trained by Lee Strasberg, these people really know how to work the audience.
They are masters of their craft. They really know how to manipulate the emotions of their followers. And I mean this as a compliment.
The popular evangelists( and Hindu gurus, and Muslim mullahs, least I forget!) can take thousands of decent men and women on a collective emotional roller-coaster ride, crying and laughing, as if caught in a spell.
History tells us that Hitler, with his impassioned oratory, could make women swoon and faint! But ofcourse he had his own agenda and he was a
nasty little rogue. Whereas the television messiahs are only trying to spread their faith,
and in the process cleansing society of the evils of the other religions.
Ah ha, that is where they are being just a wee bit naughty! Caught you! I know your dad is nice, sweet-smelling and sauve. But whoever told you that my dad stinks like a swine? Even if he did he is still my dad and
you have no business asking me to junk him.
Don't try to pin
your god on me.
The only god is the sum of all gods.
If you don't know that, you are not only ignorant and uneducated but you are also mean, biased, illogical, boorish, childish, arrogant, egotistical, unreasonable and blind. You are a SOB and a fool and you are the reason why the world is in tatters today. You may be a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim or a Zoroastrian it makes no difference. You have not out-grown your childhood when you fought with your best friend claiming your father was better than his father! That mindset still rules. You make me sick. I wish the worst nightmare on you!
Many years back I was at a massive gathering of Muslims on the Red Road, in Kolkata, and was stunned to hear a mullah deriding Hindus and Hindustan over the public address system for one full hour. I was there to take photographs. I turned to the people around me, all Mulims, and asked what this was all about. This was many years back but I recall clearly that to their immense credit all of them said, "usko chillaney do, usko baat kown sunta hai!"( let him shout, who listens to him anyway). I guess times have changed. Now I guess, we do listen to the mullahs, the gurus and the priests. And look where we have landed ourselves. Look what the career-religious leaders have done to us. We are all rearing to go for another man's throat.
My parents had gone to a pilgrimmage to the Vaishnodevi shrine and had brought back this sachet of PRASAD from that hallowed place. Why people go to Vaishnodevi at all is a mystery in itself. The place has no history, no mystic, no natural beauty. But more on that some other time. Here I want you take a close look at the message on the 'wrapper'. 'Do not throw this wrapper on the way or in the dustbin.' Now this is one hell of an enigma wrapped in a mystery! Will someone ( preferably someone from the Vaishnodevi Shrine Board) please tell what I am supposed to do with this thing? Archive it? Gulp it down? Bury it on the banks of the Ganga? Burn it, and cause air pollution? Pass it down as an heirloom? Frame it and hang it in the puja room? Some one should know! The Vaishnodevi guys are pretty hep. I would advise them to weigh the option of 'virtual' prasad in future. That'll sort the dilemma of the wrapper as well as the dilemma of correctly spelling simple English words like 'THROW.'
