Market Everywhere

It's an era of marketing. And in this age of marketization today's marketer haven’t left anything or anyone. That’s why on 14th February, people are supposed to express their love, but not bare handed, but with costly gifts available in market and the 'rare' red roses available that day, whose price can also make the price of normal days bouquet seem less. Recently one of my friend also persuaded me to send my mom a gift or card on Mothers' day. And quite a few more days are there on which you can show your love or care by splurging. Why so ??? Do we have to wait for one particular day to express love for our beloveds? Can we only show our love to our parents by sending them something on one particular day decided by someone whom we are not even aware of? Does it in any way affect our love for our parents? If that was not enough, I realized that God is also not unaffected by this recent wave of marketization.

It was a beautiful evening of one of our much awaited weekends when I decided to visit the most famous temple at Bangalore with 3 of my friends from IMA. The desire to reach the main hall kept on increasing as we reached there and saw the beautiful temple from outside. Just a few steps walk and we were there, in fact, almost there, as we were behind a long queue. It hardly matters really as in God's home the waiting in a queue is immaterial.. Also on each step we were to chant "Hare Krishna Hare Rama" which we did gleefully.

However it was now, when the real problem started. As we were already in queue for almost half an hour, we saw some people passing through the other way in which they were not even required to be in line, not needed to chant and directly heading to the main premises. Oh, I realized these must be the people who have spent bucks for "The Special Darshan" for which we too were persuaded by some of the staff members of temple while entering. Moreover those who paid for the special darshans could go near to the idols, sit there for 5 minutes in front of them. And those who hadn't paid for special darshan could only be there for 5 seconds or so while going through a queue at double the distance from the special people sitting inside. So does this means that "all are not equal at God's home" as told to us till now? Does it make me more worthy to reach to God if I pay for special darshan? And will it affect his blessing towards us in anyway? Then why this discrimination is there??

It is true that profits are the very basic of every business. However, while going blindly for money one should understand that there are a few things beyond money also viz. love, affection, care, relations and also GOD !!!!!
-Mayank Chaturvedi (A)