OF RELIGION AND HEADACHES

Our country of a billion plus, seeps in tradition and culture of the religious kind. However with the changing times, our biggest challenge has been to keep that same culture and tradition alive. Much like trying to fit the whole Indian Ocean in a bottle. its an exercise in futility. Something has to give way. I'm sure you get the picture.

People who know me well enough, will agree that I have never had any inclination towards either of those three, in that order. I wasn't always like this. I did pray... mostly just before results time, which was the latter part of my life, (when I mostly flunked in most subjects) but when I was a kid I had to do it every evening. Somewhere along the way between my childhood and my teenage life, the constant pestering had subsided gradually, which seemed fine to me, but sometimes it surfaced to haunt me for a few days. You see I come from a religious family. Nothing hardcore, but just enough to drive you crazy, occasionally. I've had numerous, lecture sessions right from childhood about it, not to mention the hugely engrossing stories of Gods and Godesses, infused with morals, told by my grandmother. But yet somehow, inspite of all that initiation, religion appealed to me no more than the excitement of staring at a horses rear end. Did someone say atheist?

Festival time was the worst. Well, you could say that as kids, I did enjoy festivals especially bursting crackers, but as you grow up, those sort of things loose shine.Since I've come to live in Pune, I've been astounded by the number of festivals that are celebrated by the Hindu Brahmin community. Ganesh Chaturthi and Diwali are of course more popular, but apart from that you have Mahalakshmi, Navratri, Ram Naomi, Gudi Padva . . . I can hardly remember all of them. The first two are the major cause of traffic jams to the already clogged up roads. The sale of crackers during the 17 - 18 days of these two can put the budget of Defence to shame. The collective noise levels of the two wars would have been much less, atleast the good part of the war was that you could stick a bullet in some bad guys arse, in this all you do is make noise and pollute the air. Result, partial deafness, sleepless nights, clogged up lungs, and an awesome headache. Sounds interesting.