The Food Philosophy of Religion

This is the month of Holy Ramadan. This month is having a great importance for the Muslim of the world. For this whole month, the Muslim people fast between the periods of Sunrise to the Sunset, though the calculation made based on the movement of moon. A different kind of enthusiasm can be seen in every Muslim during this month. They take their food in the morning before the sun rises and this is called “Sehari” and the evening food is taken after sunset and this is called “Iftaar”. They are having a tradition of breaking their fast in group during the “Iftaar”. This meeting and eating together makes the bonding between them even stronger. I really don’t know if this tradition has been developed by the ancient Muslims to let them understand the importance of control over their desire or was a way of teaching them the grandness of the unity!

My stockist office is in the main market of Raipur. In between the stockist office to my flat, there a Muslim reigned colony is located. During this month, this colony looks very ceremonial. While coming back to home every evening, lot of people in white Kurta / Sherwani and white Zulfi Cap are seen wandering here and there greeting people, talking, laughing together. This entire scene is so lively that it gives me eminent pleasure witnessing this. What a tradition to get bonded together. And this perhaps is the only reason that Muslim sometimes are misunderstood as the potential threat to the world especially the progressive world. But as a matter of fact, it’s not Muslim but it is their unity which the progressive world is feared of.

There is also a Mosque on the way to home from the office. My time of returning back home almost coincides with the Iftaar time. Near the mosque, a lot of temporary shops can be seen during the entire month. These shops are having just a table in the name of furniture over which lot of food items of different shapes and sizes are decoratively cumulous up for selling. These food articles are being purchased by the people coming out of the mosque after their evening prayers, for the purpose of calling off that day’s roza. These food articles are used for Iftaar. Many a times it happened that when I am passing by this road, the people are coming out of the mosque. From the mosque gate, they just run like a bullet towards these temporary food stalls to purchase their stuff and have it in group after remembering “Allah” and break to their respective works.

What one thing that attracts me is the commonness of philosophy of all the religions. This one common thing is every religious ritual of all the religion of the world ends with eating scrumptious food. We in some dharma call it “Prasad” or in some other religion call it “Langar” and in some religion it is known as “Iftaar”.

Every great religious philosophy ends in keeping the mankind alive. And for being alive, its food and not philosophy that is required. The food philosophy of Religion…!

Religious Liberty

Written a year back on Ganesh Chaturthi

Ever since the ascent of mankind, people would have started thinking of putting some guideline to make them live within the terminus ad quem. This would have motivated people to make some philosophy of life. Probably different philosophy had given birth to various religions. Hinduism is one such philosophy which I believe is more of the way of life. Hinduism gives such a liberty to its partisans to modify it as per the need of time, without hampering the soul of the basic philosophy. But sometimes, the liberty becomes that much boundary less that it starts giving you itching in your soul.

Ganesh Festival is having its own history in our country. Though Lord Ganesha is as old as any Ved or Upnishad or probably more than that. But, in our country, it is believed that Bal Gangadhar Tilak was the person who had started making the celebration of this festival larger, in view of creating a national integration during the rising tension between Hindu and Muslims in the country. Lord Ganesha is one of the most experimented Gods in Hindu Religion. I mean, artists have experimented a lot on the structure of Lord Ganesha in their sculpture or paintings.

These days when Ganesh Festival is commencing, lot of festival pandal can be seen in every nooks and corner of Raipur. I don’t know about the astha or belief of the people, but the statues of Lord are something which is beyond our imagination. If at some place the idol is being limned as software professional with the laptop in his hand instead of modak, then at some other place he is being represented as the hippy, at some place as politician than at some other place people have imagined him as the freedom fighter. The worst is that, at some place the lord is being shown sitting on tiger or on eagle which is beyond any mythological sayings.

Great. Total respect for the emotions of people for the Lord. But isn’t this the way of making fun of the belief of the dharma rather then showing the astha over the god. Though the present stature of god is also imaginations of human. Perhaps no one has witnessed the lord. Neither anyone of that time, if any, had transcripted that how god was looking like. But the ancient visualization of the stature of lord Ganesha or any god is having some strong philosophy and explanation that don’t have any in today’s people’s creativity towards transforming the stature of the lord.

The liberty of Hinduism could not and should not be misused like this. This really hurts me a lot. While seeing such idol, rather than bowing infront of the lord, it gives me a kind of wrath towards the unnecessary creativity of the makers of the idol. I think there has to be a kind of policing over these things by the society so that we should pass on good and great things to our children rather than giving them a very strange form of dharma which in due course of time would become the story of history and the Hinduism would be lost in the books only.

S-(LANG)UAGE

We are educated bunch of people. We know every thing. We have answer to almost all the questions of the world. But there is only one problem. That is the accuracy of the words that we are using. Means, for putting things into words, we often forget the exact spellings. This is well observed on hoardings, boards, brochures and other literatures used by us. This is not applicable with English only. Even in Hindi or Marathi (I know only these much languages, so only that much examples), while writing something, we often makes spelling mistakes. Sometimes, these mistakes lead to totally different meaning of the sentence. I don’t really understand that these mistakes are because of we are so much forgetful or its just we have learnt this way only.

A pure English or pure Hindi is very rare hearing these days. That’s why we generally give compliments to someone who speaks a little correct English or Hindi. While doing so we just forget that Hindi is our mother tongue which we have grown up speaking. Even English is very common these days atleast in the group of people who uses the media where they make mistakes.

It’s not only the education but the correct education that is the need of the hour. Otherwise we will end up loosing the soul of the language and would discover a very new language like we already have done in case of “Hinglish”. And loosing a grip from our own language is first step to the societal degradation.

7 Hours of Injustice

Last weekend I was in Tata Nagar for some of my personal work. As it was just a day affair, so had not taken any leave. The work went well and was to leave by evening train. The train was almost on time. I boarded the train and reached my berth. And there was a kind of shock for me. 5 young men were sitting in that compartment. They were all drunk and their drinking was still on. One of the men requested me to take his berth which is the aisle berth. I agreed as I wasn’t in mood to invite unnecessary problems during the journey.

Thankfully I was carrying this book “Jangalnaama” by Satnam. This is the travelogue of Satnam in the Mao Guerilla camp. Since the time I had been staying in Chattisgadh, Naxalism is one topic which attracts me a lot. I really want to understand that why this philosophy of mid 60’s is still persistent when we already have moved a lot ahead in the economic progression. When Jamindari Pratha is completely eradicated and untouchability is not something which is seen in any part of the country, still why a philosophy based on these thought is attracting people. When education and development has reached to every nooks and corner of the country, why there are groups that think that development in their strong hold areas will dissemble their philosophy which is almost insignificant in today’s world. Why we still talk about social justice when a lot work has been done in last 60 – 62 years from our independence and is more or less achieved in the broader parts of nation. Why the interest of merely 1 or 2% people is jolting the entire nation.

This was a nice book. I was in flow of reading the book and the train was maintaining that flow with me. The distance was shortening station after station. Neither I nor the train cared much about that as we both were busy with the speed, one with the speed of reading and other with the speed of running. Those drunken guys were kept walking to bathroom. Just not to get distracted with this, I pulled my curtain and got engrossed in the book. I was traveling the Guerilla camps from one village to other with the author. Suddenly I heard one of the drunken guys giving some information to their pals is very loud voice. He said that Chakradharpur station is coming and this train will not go ahead of this station till the morning as there is a Naxalite affected area ahead. With this he added some abusive words to the Naxals, Railways and the Government.

I cross checked this with the attendant and this information was totally correct. So this was 10 O’clock night and the train will leave Chakradharpur station not sooner than 5 O’clock in the morning. Till the time we will have to be the uninvited guest of Chakradharpur. This is because of the fact that The Government of India think that the life of every citizen of the country is precious and this is the best our government can do to save our life from any unfortunate incidence in the area which though is part of the great nation called India but even our government is feared to cross in the darkness.

What the heck!

To my surprise our train was not the only one to stay at Chakradharpur station. There were 2 more trains halting there and 3 more were to stay there for the whole night.

This was really disgusting. For the whole 7 hours we will have to stay here for the reason that the entire nation doesn’t have any solution. Would Kanu Sanyal and Ranu Mojumdaar had been alive they would have felt proud seeing our Government helpless infront of their philosophy. Would Gandhiji have been alive, he would have felt ashamed seeing that he worked for his whole life to bring social justice in the society in his Non – violent ways but here even though the social justice has came, people is still beating that same drum just for their own nasty interest, giving priority to their thought over the nation. That 7 precious hours, 7 hours of un-productivity for the part of nation that is having only one geographical fault of being in the red corridor.

Reading “Jungalnaama” was like experiencing the book as the author was in jungle to experience the life of Mao Guerilla and I was waiting outside the jungle for him to come and board the train. Untill that, I will have to give those 7 precious hours for the cause which for sure I am not supporting.