Disposable Gods and Ancestors

While on my morning walk near Ulsoor Lake, Bengaluru, I came across a strange sight. Someone had discarded framed photos of Gods along with those of his/her ancestors. They had been lined along the wall as if the owner wanted to show the passersby his disdain and rejection of all that his/her family had venerated up till now.

The sight was disturbing to say the least. 

Change certainly is the only certainty and old must give way to the new. Yet I felt sad at the way those Gods and elders in the abandoned picture frames were staring at me with forlorn eyes. They seemed to be saying "Please please grant us a dignified end". 

When life departs, we all know the body left behind is nothing but a deteriorating carcass, yet we have elaborate rituals to dispose it. Even proper विसर्जन rituals are performed for the disposal of statues of Gods once the festivals are over.

We should make it a practice to be minimalist. Whenever we have an urge to add something to our house decor, or buy something for 'keeps', we should think of how and when it can and should be disposed.

Let us make it a point to handle change with care and dignity.

Leaving The Comfort Zone

With ancient civilizations such as our's, the common refrain is that things hardly change. We are so comfortable with the old order that ushering in the new, is fraught with a sense, of not just fear of the unknown, but guilt of having destroyed the old.
Old ideas, which we tenaciously hold, are the root cause of much of the strife and pain around us. These may be about God and Creation,or about Caste, or for that matter the Mores and Traditions, about which we are extremely possessive and proud. I feel that the problem lies in the fact that we are in a transitory phase. On the one hand technology has progressed by leaps and bounds, and on the other, humans still are found to be adhering to age old thinking. I, feel that this is a glaring failure of our education system, that in-spite of centuries of enlightened thinking, majority of the people still cannot grasp, the simple truths, that science has made available and proved beyond doubt. The difficult part is convincing the majority, who have been brainwashed, since childhood, to believe in certain ideas, and no amount of proofs, to the contrary, can dent their beliefs.
I feel the time has come when we need to overhaul our entire "belief systems", be they about our attitudes towards fellow humans, fellow living beings, or for that matter towards the entire animate and inanimate universe.
Change is indeed difficult to accept, but as the protagonist says in Dr. Johnson's famous book 'Who moved my cheese', "When you change what you believe, you change what you do!"
In a lighter vein, I made a small beginning in accepting change today! I always believed that only a certain barber knew how to cut my hair, and I had diligently stuck with him for all of Thirty Five years. I had to go for a new one as my old trusted one had become old and infirm, and to my surprise, the new one certainly did a great job.
After all, Change is not always for the worse!