With Durga Puja round the corner, this is the beginning of festive season in India. Goddess Durga would soon be landing on mother earth to bless people who would be leaving no stone unturned to offer their puja(prayer) to the popular goddess and seek her blessings. The festival is also widely known as Dasara or Dussera, depending on which side of the Vindhyas you are residing in.  

                             The Dussera and Durga Puja celebrations will be followed by Kali Puja and Diwali as well as Laxmi Puja. People would make an all out effort to appease Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. Then there will be Kartik Purnima, an opportunity for the people to offer their prayer to lord Kartikeswar or Kartikeya.

                             The next in line will be Christmas, an important event for the citizens belonging to Christian community to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. In India many Hindus, Muslims as well as members of Sikh community also enjoy and celebrate Christmas in a big way.

                            A month or so after Christmas, it will be turn of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge to shower her annual blessings on the students in schools, colleges and other educational institutions. After Saraswati Puja, the next big festival perhaps will be the Jagannath Rath Yatra in Puri. People from across the globe will rush to the Odisha temple town to pull the chariots or Raths of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra the three presiding deities of the Puri temple.

                           The popular annual Rath Yatra or the Car Festival has no more remained confined to Puri or different Indian cities and villages alone. The colourful festival is now being celebrated across the globe, even in Pakistan. A video of Pakistani Hindus celebrating the Rath Yatra and pulling the chariot on the street of the Muslim dominated terror hit nation had gone viral on the social media this year.

                           In between there will be many festival and celebrations of the Muslim community too. One form or the other, festivals and festivity go on in India throughout the year.

                           Now the question is if the country is home to so many gods and goddess then why majority of the Indians have remained poor? Indians do offer their prayers to these gods and goddesses with utmost sincerity. They regularly visit temples, mosques, gurudwaras and churches and indulge in all kinds of religious activities including fasting in regular intervals to appease them(the gods and goddesses). Yet the citizens remain unblessed.

                          People are not only poor in India but they encounter hell lot of difficulties and sufferings every year because of the natural calamities like floods, droughts and cyclones that hit different parts of the country on annual basis. No gods and goddess come forward to reduce their pain and sufferings.

                         Year after year the country is also being hit by diseases of all kinds and sizes. Be it bird flu or the swine flu or several unheard of flus and diseases. “We may be hit by a dog flu soon in which a patient will bark like a typical Indian street dog”, a young man was heard funnily commenting to his friend on a Bhubaneswar street sometime back while reacting to a news report about the outbreak of an unidentified fever in a backward Odisha district.

                     No one ever heard of any of the Indian gods and goddess making an attempt to prevent the diseases from visiting the country and affecting people.

                      Therefore, I sometime wonder why this contradiction? People pray to these gods and goddesses with utmost sincerity and devotion. Yet they are so heartless that they never step in to rescue them(the devotees) during bad times.

                         Two reasons could be attributed to this phenomena. One – all these gods and goddesses are fake. They are good for nothing. They only cheat the innocent people with their “agents” who are seen in plenty everywhere particularly in places of worships. 

                        I, for one, do not believe in this theory. I am strongly of the view that gods and goddesses do exist. Otherwise an utterly chaotic and unruly nation like India would not have been surviving in the first place. The country gets going only because of the gods and goddesses. I personally have felt the presence of some, if not all, gods in my life. I will explain how and when another time and on another day.

                       Now the second reason – the gods and goddesses are not happy with their devotees for their actions and activities. This is the reason which sounds valid and true. If not all but majority of the Indians carry the misconception that all their sins and wrongdoing will be washed away if they will go to a temple, mosque or a church and raise or cross their hands and make a public demonstration of their devotion and loyalty. Pleased and appeased, the gods and goddesses then will shower blessings on them. The blessings will be doubled if one would offer a diya or some money to the priest or a poor beggar standing in front of a place of worship.

                     No one can make gods and goddesses happy this way. You have to be a true human being to get the blessings of the almighty who is omnipresent. He is here, there and everywhere. Therefore, one need not go to a temple, mosque, church or gurudwar and offer a prayer. Just be a good human. That will be enough. India will remain what India is till the common people realize this.

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