.......a journey called life

I am not a religious man. I am not an atheist either. In the extreme case of serenity provided by few places, I turn into a devotee. I remember Chinmaya Mandir at Begumpet (Hyderabad) gave me that feeling once. I believe in supernatural powers and there is some sense of higher power driving my actions and conscience. So far so good!

Let's turn our attention to Hindu Mythology for a while. According to old texts, there are 4 dhaams (Jagannath, Badrinath, Dwarka and Kedarnath) and taking a trip to all 4 of them provides a man with a chance to wash away all his sins. There is a fifth place which claims to have the 4 in 1 power of dhaams and you can do all that in just one shot – That's Vrindavan for you.

I am not here to debate on that. I am here to share my experience with a gang of thugs I came across in Lord Krishna's play garden i.e. Vrindavan. The whole place is a network of agents. As soon as you enter Vrindavan, there will be people waiting for you at the cross roads. If you do the inevitable mistake of asking one of them for direction, consider that person inside your car. There is no power which can stop that. We did the mistake of letting the window shield down. A 10 year old boy hooked on to it and dragged himself with our moving car for almost half a kilometer when he decided to yield to our curses. But the place is so darn complex that you HAVE to ask for directions. We chose a gentleman who offered his service for a small sum of Rs 30 to help us reach the "main" temple. But, that was only the tip of the iceberg. He surrendered us to a different guy who acted like a guide and showed us the place before letting us in the "main" temple. He claimed that there are more than 5000 temples in the city but only one temple accepts "puja" and gives you the "Prasad" (I seriously doubt that hypothesis but there was no time to validate that). That was the catch! As he showed us into the main temple, he recited 3 rules of the temple –

1) No one is allowed to throw money at the god. All donations are done in proper manner (Later we will discover the proper manner induces a lot of upswing in the donation amount).

2) You are not supposed to discuss how much to donate. It should come from within. Later, they would be the first one to break this rule.

3) You are supposed to distribute the "Prasad" when you go back to your home. This was done for 2 reasons. First, you should have a need for the "Prasad" which doesn't come free and second, you will act as publicity agents for the temple (That's what I am doing now).

We were guided to the "puja" place where a "pundit" was waiting for us. He told all the stories about Lord Krishna and the significance of the place and then went straight down to business. He opened his ledger and asked my dad how much he wants to donate. He gave 3 options…all the options were in thousands…my dad requested for a hundred type figure when that guy went sentimental and started giving the typical sales pitch. At that point, I had all my devotions go down the drain and I was feeling like being surrounded by salesmen who were trying to snatch my wallet. I hate sales pitch! That pundit had already done the segmentation as he was not considering our family as one. He considered all the married couples as one customer each and wanted similar donations from them as well. That included me! The way he was negotiating, I was feeling horrible. I went atheist all over again. I juts stopped short of being defiant and out of civic sense and in the name of god, we made the smallest donation he would accept to give us the smallest packet of "Prasad" he had. My dad gave 10 times what I gave and his packet of "Prasad" was nearly 10 times larger. Cause and effect!

After that moment, I was not paying attention to whatever that person was telling on our way back. He showed us some more places where we were supposed to bow down for the blessing of the god but there was no god there in my eyes. It was a place of thugs and I just let myself being robbed. There were no options of a secret donation as the art of salesmanship will not work in a secret setting.

I am sure that a hardcore believer would see them as agents of god who are collecting the extra money each one of us have to support the needy. I don't agree to that line of thinking. The way they were trying to extract the donations in the name of god was simply wrong and whatever I have written above is purely my interpretation of the scheme of things happening at Vrindavan on that particular day. I am pretty sure that day was not an exception but rather a norm. There are temples where donations are done in secrecy and there is no one to help you decide how much you should donate. This place just doesn't believe in that arrangement. That pundit was there to decide how much devotion you have for the lord and accordingly passes the verdict on how much you should donate.

No more Vrindavan for me! I had enough!

Lord Krishna, I still believe in you!