Yo!
I think I come here when I am confused or when I want to make others confused! I am done with this world. Don’t worry, this is not my suicide note 😀 I can always live alone and live with or without anything.
Last weekend, we went to a trek Kumar Parvat and fortunately, we didn’t finish it 😀 We didn’t reach the main peak because it was too far and it was too sunny and we were too tired and it was too difficult and I am using so many TOOs just because I can 😛
Forget the trek because this blog ain’t about that. It’s regarding our visit to a temple there. It was Subramaniam temple.
When men go inside the temple, they are asked to remove their shirts and go inside. It was surprising at first. Why such a ritual? I asked 3 of my friends and got 3 different answers.
Answer1(2 more friends told this same thing): The temple is located in such a geographical place that it emits superior energy and for us to receive it, we have to remove our shirts.
Answer2: God wanted humans to see that we all are equal hence the rule of removing shirts because the rich will wear heavy and expensive garments while the poor will be wearing usual clothes. But in front of God, all are equal.
Answer3: In the old days, only those who wore sacred thread were allowed inside the temple and to recognize people who wore it, they were asked to remove the shirts. If found not wearing it, either they were asked to leave the temple or wear one sacred thread from there and proceed inside.
Now, tell me, which answers seem logical to you? My first question on listening to Answer1 & Answer2 was WHY ONLY MEN? Why only men need superior energy or why only men had to be shown that they were equals? You cannot ask women to remove their shirts/tops then why men? But maybe women suck the required energy from men, hence they are not asked 😀
To be honest, I could see some sense in Answer3 but then I don’t wear a sacred thread and I did go into the temple without any trouble. So, what’s the point of asking to remove shirts when it is useless?
Now, that was my secondary disappointment with our culture. Primary disappointment was the people in South worship Elephants. In some temples, they keep elephants with bells chained to their neck so that when they walk, it will make a sound. The elephants were fed the prasad(which was used to feed the idol of God).
I will be talking about one simple scenario. If the elephant is not fed the entire day, then he’ll eat whatever we feed him(he doesn’t know whether it’s prasad or not). I am strictly against chaining of animals(any living being) and doing whatever we want with them(mostly business in case of temples). It hurts to see that literate people blindly follow cultures like idol worship and help temples expand the business by donating money without realizing that the animals they keep and the insensible stuff that we do, ultimately have a ripple effect and it all adds up to the increase in the negativity in this world.
It’s just not about South India temples. It’s generic. It’s wrong as per my POV. If you’ve any other way of looking at this thing, then please feel free to share your views. And maybe I have postponed my plan of visiting Rameshwaram and Tirupati because of the above-mentioned reason. Help me gain some sense in this matter.
P.S.: Some of my friends don’t like my approach of singling out a particular region of India and discussing the ill-things regarding those. I can go ahead and write things which are not correct on Orissa and Gujarat too. Hope some people understand that this is a general problem and has to be addressed anywhere it hampers our society. For this, I am not doing any business in temples by donating money. Instead, I like to use it in some other way by helping poor people. Please share your views on this too.
Smiles here & Smiles there 