Wednesday 24 October 2012

Religious Madness

We all know that there many cruelties justified in the name of God.  Israelis can subhumanise the Palestinians, Taliban can shoot a young girl wants to be educated.  These are incidents catch peoples' attention.  But then there are many, no one knows about.

This happened to me in 2004 in Oman.  I took my daughter of three years to a barber who got mad at my request that I expected him to cut a female child's hair.  This illiterate man scolded me in Bengali, and I had no idea why he was upset about.  Then, there were a few more Bengali stared at me as if I have committed a sin.  I left the saloon.  That was the safest thing for me and my daughter.

Till now, I haven't figured out why, but I am assuming that they were mad at me because I have offended their religious sensitivities during Ramadan month.  If that's the case, they may have pleased their God, but I am sure mine felt sorry for them, and advised me that I should forgive them.

Today is Duserra, the day Goddess Durga defeated Mahimasura, the demon king.  That is for most Hindus, but for a significant part of them it is the day Lord Rama defeated another demon King, Ravana.  Today I went to a part of Delhi, which celebrates Goddes Durga.  Last year I went to another part of Delhi, which celebrated Rama.  Huge effigies of Ravana were lit up with electronically controlled fireworks, which also followed by huge fireworks to end the celebration.

This time I witnessed, as a part of the celebration, Durga statues of various sizes were brought in by devotees to the banks of River Yamuna, and then the idols were drowned in water.  Pilgrims then chant praises to Durga and went home.  Literally thousands of statues would have been brought and drowned by the end of the day.  I saw a dozen of them within 15 minutes.

A digressive tale about Angel Yamuna.  Yamuna and her two relatives - Angels Saraswati and Ganga - had a quarrel, and were banished to earth to become rivers.  They were cursed that they should wash away sins of sinners.  Sarawati, had a lighter sentence, that she will not be seen by anyone.  So, she is considerd an 'underground river'.  All three were to meet at 'Triveni Sangam', near Allahabad, and then flow into the Bay of Bengal.  There too, they were required to wash the sins of a king, whose location was not known.  So, Ganges got divided into many small rivulets, before it discharges into the Bay.

Now back to Yamuna.  I am not sure if it was due to the curse or not, near Delhi, it is just a sewer.  Everything from 21 million Delhiwalas drain into this.  Its filthy, smelly and unhygienic.  Yet, the devotees drown their idols, swim in it, and have fun splashing water at each other.

Drowing of statues and all other organic wastes with it will increase the BOD, eutrophise the river. 

What a madness in the name of GOD!.

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Stay away from MMIA Lagos

Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria, is a place to be avoided, if you can.  I just came through that, and I will try my best to avoid this in future.  I was checked 12 times from the time I arrived at the airport till the plane departed.  Here's the sequence of checks.
  1. My luggage was checked
  2. My passport and visas were checked
  3. My passport was scanned
  4. I checked in and got my boarding passes.
  5. I got through the emigration
  6. I got through a metal detector
  7. I was frisked
  8. My boarding pass was checked
  9. My visas were checked
  10. I was frisked again
  11. When I was about to sit on my seat, someone was waiting to check my passport again.
Thank God that was the end of it.  Nigeria is notorious for various frauds, scams and crime, and yes, they have to be vigilante.  What they are not is being professional about it.

I am going to avoid this airport in future, and I advise that you too.

Featured post

Reflections from Cemeteries

During the past two weeks, I was at two Cemeteries, one in Colombo, Sri Lanka and the other in Sydney, Australia.  I probably spent about 9...