religion

Religion: A waste of time

religion

The recent news of the Ayodhya verdict have started a spate of debates across all media (from NDTV to Facebook!).

That apart, so many discussions wherein people end up confusing religion and god. I thought it was high time I pen down my thoughts on the difference between the two and whenever such a discussion occurs, I’ll proceed to give the link instead of going into the details of explaining the difference (funda re-use!!).

All religions have been started by men in order to lay down a set of agreed upon rules and norms for their community. This community could be brought together through mutual agreement (pagans, hindus, etc) or by instilling fear. Fear of being a heretic (islam, christianity, etc). The details are irrelevant, since in either case one thing rings true – its a social construct.

A social construct which generally pre-supposes the presence of a superbeing to keep all the community within line of the norms. If you break the norms, your soul will rot in eternal hell/netherworld/underworld/etc. If you follow all the norms like a good little boy, then you have chance to enter heaven/valhalla/olympus/etc. All these created craftily to breed only one type of behavior from the masses –

Compliance.

Now this superbeing, is usually god (sometimes it is the devil), but most of the times; it is god.

You take away all these rules and faff (the stuff I generally call as कर्मकांड), and you are still left with god. So what good is god without religion.

A lot. The idea of god, gives us faith, the faith that even if one fails, by some miracle (and these do happen :)), the intended outcome will be met. God is faith, and that’s precisely why atheists and theists will keep on arguing about God … because each will not let go of their faith.

So for god’s sake don’t waste time on religion, but still keep the faith :)

Server and Vastu: Technology and Spirituality

Throughout my life, I have been a Mulder and sometimes a Scully (for those who have not seen X-Files, a believer and sometimes a skeptic), but mostly a believer. But whenever there would be a rite performed which seemed a bit on the inane side, I would question the entire objective behind the same.

Some days back, we procured a server for our hosting needs. After a decently elongated procurement cycle, we realized that we would also need a separate server room for the same. Thus, a server room was built and the server was appropriately installed in there. Then, most of the management suggested that we do a vastu study on this. Fair enough, a vastu feasibility study was conducted, and it was decided that the server be shifted to the corner of the room. The power supply could not be put in the corner, and the table had to be shuffled across in that small space. Finally, my server room was vastu compliant. A post-installation pooja was done for the server, the coconut was broken, arati done and sweets distributed.

Funny no? That we have reached such a decent level of technology, albeit we stick to our religious practises and beliefs, to ensure that the gods are appeased.

Who would the god of hosting and server space be? Suggestions welcome.

Server-goda–swahaa!!

Corporate Pujari!

At eYantra Ind Ltd, we have a very nice culture of weekly pooja. Every Friday evening, the employees assemble in front of the office’s devghar and the pooja begins. This rite is performed by our Accounts manager (I do not think its just a coincidence!), Mr. Koteswara Rao. Personally speaking, I like this weekly rite being a god fearing person myself.

Today, while I was talking to one colleague on this, he informed me that many Indian corporates are into this, a lot of SMEs, and some big ones like Satyam as well. He then went on to inform me that his friend does this for a living!! He goes to Satyam every week, and they have set up this employee pooja fund, which is given to the pujari as dakshina! And a pretty decent amount at that. So true, how many of us do take the time to do a small pooja every day? Its not surprising then that many of us dont even know how to proceed when its needed. My daily ritual consists of a simple incense stick and a small prayer, but for formal occassions, I would definitely want one Corporate Pujari for myself!!

Interesting business no? In fact a friend of a friend has launched a business of his own just on this theme. Its known as Sacred Moments, wherein he supplies to individuals and businesses with kits for occassions like these. Looks like some people are into Corporate Karma after all.