LAKSHMI PUJA..............

LAKSHMI PUJA…..

DEAR SOUL,
With the white kash flooding all around and the sparrows busy chirping I felt like wishing you a shubho bijoya though I myself is quite finicky about any purity {shubho } left all around .Pardon me for I started with my usual skeptic note ,you might rather call it cynicism but I am a profound self declared optimist who does see a silver lining behind the darkest of clouds .
Today is 13th of October, a day before the goddess of prosperity is welcomed at every door; Lakshmi puja as we call it from this part of the world .My office has already started its preparations and so have my relatives back at home with loads of sweets being made and sold all around.Though I don’t want to question religious proximity which I have so faithlessly done so many times , I am really anxious to interrogate the mother goddess of her existence, rather her methodical existence in the life of the rich and the millionaires.Is it because she stays where her riches are or is it this really that where she stays gold clog over.
Not to beat around the bush lets come to point.This is that part of the year when suddenly people become supremely religious of all other things and spend millions in an attempt to invoke and please the gods. And these gods pleased profoundly ‘bless’ their ‘devotees’ on and off.Well I am not jealous of some being blessed more than they require,what I am at a question with is why I can’t these Gods if at all they are present somewhere help out the ones without a grain of food.The Gita says poverty and pangs come with your deeds of past lives {though there lies another rhetorical question} and so even the gods desolate the destitutes?I do not have the courage and faith to follow Mother Teresa and say embrace the poor and the needy but yes why can’t these puja committees change their competitive approach of decorating the pandals to a concrete competition of helping the destitutes.
Let’s not think of questioning the gods with their own existences at a stake.Its better to question and get answers from humans though how so tough the solution be.There are very few companies who will generously donate a few to the roadside beggar {no 80G deductions} and the others who have laboriously given bonuses and exgratias would never bother to look for these.A few of those typical marwari companies would devote some of their riches to make a huge marble temple instead of some help to the ones on the open roads,they prefer through agencies and proper channels{again for the income tax redemption}
This is a country where rich go on acquiring wealth and the poor going from the tracks to the gutters.Is it just because of the political setup or inhuman millionaires or is it a deadly disease in the form of greed in millions of Indians that has become an epidemic with grotesque false intrusions.a plethora of the mass are running after acquiring money on false terms and the others suffering beyond imaginations.Amidst this how does our generations think of Diwali and Lakshmi puja where millions of lakshmis sleep unclothed in the gutters?
I understand festivals are required for socialization and enhancement of a happy civilization but is it at the cost of others? With the rising inflation and a skyward turn of the prices of essential commodities still how do people even think of fireworks ? A city that doesn’t have food{leave apart nourishment}for millions do have millions to waste.Goddess Lakshmi do you listen?
ANANYA