Faith vs. Superstition

Based on what I have seen, heard and learnt in life, I have always believed in existence of god, though I was not a very temple going person. God had proven his presence to me many times – especially difficult times are the ones when even a slight ray of hope is a god given gift. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because with hope comes faith and courage to face the most difficult times.  But sometimes, we don’t realize when this faith evolves into superstition.

About 18 years ago, I was in the struggling phase of my career. Having recently started a family at the age of 24 with almost nil savings, finance was a challenge all the time. The world seemed to be against us and misery looked like the only future. My wife Dimple had always been more religious than me, and she sometimes used to visit a well known Balaji temple in Dombivli. Once she asked me to accompany her to the temple. It wasn’t very keen to go, since I was wary of how these places of worship are often a well organized network to generate revenue. But I gave in to her wish and decided to visit the temple once more as a tourist than a devotee. As expected, I saw was a series of expenses at each stage of worship as below:

• Rs. 18 auto expenses to and fro
• 50 paise per pair to remove your chappals outside the temple
• Rs. 15 a tokri (basket) containing coconut, tulsi (basil), bananas
• Rs. 2 ticket for Archana
• Re. 1 for a diya  in the Navgraha section

Additionally, donation boxes were conveniently located in front of every deity. When standing in front of god, most people feel obliged to put some money in each of them, and I followed the rule by putting some money in each box. Then after completing the darshan, when we were about to leave the temple, Dimple put in another Rs. 10 in a larger donation box called Hundi. When asked about the reason for this additional donation, she told me about a story where Lord Balaji had taken a loan from King Kuber to marry Goddess Lakshmi, and in turn had made a pledge that whatever donation a devotee drops in the Hundi, the lord will multiple it tenfold and give it back to the devotee.

By this time, I was losing my patience since I had spent almost Rs. 70 at a time when towards the end of each month, paying Rs. 3 for a shared auto was a challenge. In a way, I felt robbed and that visiting the temple was a complete waste of time, energy and money. I decided I wasn’t going to fall for this trap again. However, Dimple continued to visit the temple when possible on Saturdays and continued to pray for the well being of our family. There was no point arguing about it with her, since I knew the end result would be me being termed as an irresponsible, non-caring, non-understanding and non-religious person.

In a few years, things did turn a bit better for us though, thanks to a good career opportunity that came across, which made some savings possible each month, and then a beautiful daughter, Vrutti came in our life. I don’t remember exactly why, but after all these milestones of life, I gradually started believing that Lord Balaji had answered Dimple’s visits and prayers to the temple and helped improve our lifestyle. I proactively started visiting the temple with my family every Saturday.  Surprisingly, the feeling about getting looted did not exist anymore. On the contrary it was relaxing, probably because I did not have to battle the month end woes now, and thus was able to please the Lord by my presence each weekend. If for some reason we could not visit the temple on a Saturday, it seemed that we have missed an important event. My faith in god only increased over the years. But recently a question arose – are these temple visits still faith, or are we over-doing it? Some explanation is probably needed here.

All was fine until my visit in the first week of July-2017, when suddenly I realized that in all these years I had missed noticing that God too is at the mercy of inflation. For example, the Re. 1 price that we used to pay for lighting a diya in the Navgraha section 6-7 years ago was first increased to Rs. 2/- some years ago, to Rs. 4/- about a year ago and now the price has been raised directly to Rs. 10/-. I was taken aback by this sudden steep price rise of 150% for lighting a diya, in which the actual cost of the oil is barely a rupee. As far as I know, given the donations the temple anyway receives from thousands of people, it is not under any financial crisis.

The message being sent out by the temple authorities is loud and clear – if you want to perform any form of religious puja in the temple, you better be in a position to afford the price. This is probably the first time after all these years that I have asked myself some questions.

Where does all this donated money ultimately go? Does god use it? Does god even care about money? Do we even know how and where the funds are used? Is temple maintenance, repairs and renovation work so costly? Perhaps charity, but then do we really need to route our money through a medium like temple donations? Can we not directly help someone poor that we know and please god by our good deeds instead? Will god be displeased with us if we pray from home instead of paying visits to the temple? Is our faith in god still faith, or has it been converted to blind superstition?

My inner self has enlightened me with answers to all of these questions, probably something which I should have realized long ago. Well, better late than never!

I think instead of spending Rs. 10 on lighting a diya, I’ll find better ways to please god.