As soon as I stepped out of the Golden Temple, Vellore, I had to immediately switch on my laptop and type my thoughts into this word doc, before they escape the feeble confines of my mind. For those of you who are unaware of this temple, it is a somewhat new temple which has risen in fame to almost rival that of the Tirupati temple, at least in the temple goers circuit.
I have not seen a temple as grand as this one, yet. It reminded me of the Ramoji Film City. That is how grand it is. I was a little disappointed at this as I am a man of simple tastes. Initially, my thoughts turned in the negative with this display of unnecessary grandeur. Then as I walked to the main temple, it got me thinking. And I had a lot of time to do that owing to the long around the temple route that you have to take to reach the main temple.
The first question that popped up into my head was, ‘Is God really this egotist, that he will be pleased by this grandeur in his name?’ I just could not digest this revelation and was actually terrified that the answer to that might just be a yes. But then I recalled the Ramayana that I have read and knew for certain that my Ram was not. But the moment I thought of Ram, Krishna popped up into my head and though they are supposedly different avatars of the same God, they are so different. Somehow I could imagine Nitish Bharadwaj (the guy who played Krishna in BR Chopra’s Mahabharata) giving that smile of his on seeing this temple.
This led me to another question, ‘How could the same God have two such different and opposing characteristics attached to itself?’ And I think the answer to this lies in the simple fact that God understood the complexity and the diversity of man best. He knew there would be men like me, of simple taste. And he knew of the existence of men who would worship grandeur. If a touch of grandeur helps man to stray towards the good and curb evil even if in a very minimal amount, what’s wrong in it? In fact, statistics show that currently there are more men who believe in grand gestures than simple ones. Just compare the devotee traffic of Tirupati or this Golden Temple to that of say Hampi or the Shore temple.
Of course, whether God exists or not is a completely different debate for a different piece, but something commonly called God definitely is worshipped and does help somewhat in taming the evil within.
1 comment:
Although I do not say I know it all about religions or even God, as a person who simply believes in Him, this is all I can say-
The fact that temples in our country are so extravagant and rich has got very little, or almost nothing to do with God, as such. It all comes down to how Indians, or Hindu's like to worship Him. We, as a country, like to over-do things to make us over-whelmed. Take for example, something as simple as movies. Rajinikant has a temple in his name. Why? Because people think he is a larger-than-life personality. Similarly, Hindu religion is so colourful, that people cannot stop spending money on building such huge, expensive structures, to maybe pay respect to their Idols in the most grand manner.
Also, we are very consumed by consumerism. The small corrupt Indian in all of us will never leave any stone unturned to make some money out of anything. Little do people believe that there is a God in each one of us. They prefer to over-look that :)
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