Religion and Economics(My personal opinion)

If we look at how the marriage of economics and religion has ruled the attitudes and beliefs we have today, we will know how superstitious we have been.

1.Incense sticks and its business

Why do we use incense sticks? Is it to have better fragrances in the hall? Yes it is! Infact it is to please oneself. God is enlightened and does not have materialistic desire for anything.
In the attempt to please god, we have been destroying environment. Incense sticks have the following impacts:

Destruction of forest: Incense sticks are made from plants materials like resin and gums. Resins and gums have protective functions in plants. Bamboo is also exploited for this purpose. For further history visit this.

Pollution: The incomplete combustion of plant materials emits carbon that react with a molecule of oxygen to produce carbon monoxide and then slowly carbon dioxide that is harmful as per climate change. Infact, the quantity alone from incense stick isn’t a big issue but it become issue when we are degrading the forest for the raw materials, machine for processing and emission from other sources.

Health issue: Carbon monoxide and other gases I don’t have no idea of will also affect health. People usually burn this in a closed room to have better fragrances.
Notwithstanding to the aforementioned result, the trade of incense sticks keep on happening and yearly substantial forest degradation happens. Forest degradation accounts for 20% of emission as per UN-REDD. People have been brainwashed by religious sentiments and acceptance and thus become high purchasers of this. Here religion is used as the tool to make use of economics.

Statues (Murthi): “They enter darkness those who worship natural things (for e.g. air, water, fire, etc.). They sink deeper in darkness those who worship sambhuti i.e. created things”. (Yajurved 40:9). Those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires they worship demigods i.e. idols. and Deuteronomy 5:8-10
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. (Exodus 20:4–6)
Veda also says there is no image of god.
Therefore, Inspite of the statements in the scriptures many industries around the world sale statues and images of god .Who has seen god? And also in different times, different image of god is seen. The sale of image and statues has become so much that people earn their living by doing so. In disguise of religion, economics has played its cruel role in the society.

A funny incident

It was in 2007,during the annual funeral rites of my grandpa.In pour custom,the sons are to shave off their hair and fast for a day until the rites are over.
In the conclusion of the rite,purhoits (a bramin who perform puja) serve gahunt(urine of a virgin cow).It is to to get purified by sipping in a drop by all the people who have gathered.Just a small drop is to be taken.
There was a man,my distant uncle who had just retired from the RBA.(We know how stubborn and silly army are when it comes to logic).My father said,"please serve gauhnt(cow urine) to uncle".
To this,uncle responded,"i just took a cup of tea before i came here,so i cant take gauhnt"
He must have thought gauhnt was a drink served in a cup to quench thirst.so denied.

Difference between true love and manufactured love

Have you observed the following in yourself or the other?

When you don’t call your mum or dad for a week, they will be worried. But if you don’t call lovers for a day, they will be angry.
If you say you are busy to you lovers, they will misunderstand you but if you say you are busy to your mum or dad, they will understand you.
If you call a lover late night, they may get disturbed but if you call your parents late night they will be worried.
If you don’t receive the call from your lover on time they will say they will never talk again but if you do to parents they will ask if you are fine.
If you meet your lovers after a week and say you are tired; they will kick you away from food. If you say the same to your parents, they will pick you towards food.
Even if you enough balance to call your parents, you will just give a missed call but even if you don’t have much balance you will say you have enough.
Therefore, conditions are required in manufactured love but reasons are required in true love. Our parents are the best example to look for true love in life. Rest diminishes with time.

Perhaps we forget that death will come to us like a hunter riding a horse and gallop away taking us on with it. Perhaps we don’t want to remember that we must die one day or the other. No matter what, death shall come in disguise and abduct us faraway, millions of hills back. Like the replication of vampires and the zombies, death will have been searching us everywhere, every time. Sometimes concealing in the depth of opportunities; sometimes flowing from the smile and sometimes as an adversity, death shall come to us.

The greatest philosopher Socrates wrote, “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows”. One day we bid farewell to the world we have loved to stay, living behind our family, property and the worldly materials. Like a trail of our legs, we fade from the heart of mortals as time passes by and nothing but history remains untold. Whether it is good that we are dying or it is bad that we are living, no one but god knows it.

We don’t want to die yet have to die. “We have no armour against fate” as the great poet James Shriley writes in his poem, Death the Leveler. No matter how strong, how fit we are, we are ultimately the subjects of death. Sick or healthy; giant or tiny; black or white; King or peasant; male or female; Happy or sad-everyone shall be treated equally. “From soil we came and to the soil we return”, as bible unfolds.

 The great Nepalese writer and poet Dr Krishna Hari Baral writes on death, which can be translated very roughly as:

“No one has a desire to die,

Yet there isn’t a moment

That slips off without our death.

No matter where we escape,

There isn’t a place mortals won’t die”.

Every minute I am reminded of death, I get a chill run over my spinal cord raising my heartbeats. As I lie on the bed late night, a sad gust of feeling stir my mind and shakes my life. I imagine the times in future when we are on the verge of closing the eyes and squeeze out every molecule of oxygen, how suffocations will prevent us from uttering the words we desire. We will have our near and dear ones sobbing and mourning; some people not even believing we are summoned by death. “Nothing will happen to you, my dear. We will not let you die”. These are the soothing words those loved ones will speak. They give us a new desire to live. We wish, then, we never died. It is at that time we remember millions of things in short time that we might not have been able to remember in our entire life. When we see those healthy ones witnessing as we breathe last; we wish we were once again alive. There will be dreams, hopes and desires that remain raw and unfulfilled. There will be people we would love to meet for the last time yet as fate desires, so shall it be. We die but with a desire to live long.

No one likes to leave the one who have given us so many things to remember. Sometime I wish we could also say like the people living, “We will always remember you”. Of what good will that serve? Whether the dead ones are remembered or forgotten what difference will that make? I wish when we on the dead bed, we could say, “don’t worry, I will be back soon with lots of eatables. Until then take good care of yourselves”.

My only concern about death is whether I will be able to see my parents and loved ones when I breathe my last and I wish I could say, “I will be back soon”. As I think of that day, tears fall off and I suffocate. I am afraid of death. I want to live as long as I wish to.

Lines adopted from Nepali Song

Often times when hiccups attacks me,
do you remember me?
Or just have i faded from your memory
together with our parting?

Everywhere until the edge of dreams,
i see you existing;
Do you also cry as i do
when i wake up to see you fade?

As i trudge through hills and walk through forest,
whistling and panting endlessly,
and at times debating with songs
Have you forgotten that we loved?

What are we up to, as a son and daughter?

I know it is never bad to follow one dream. It is, indeed, the best way to prove our worth. However, it is never good to go against the dreams of our parents who, for ages have shed rivulets of sweats just to see us follow the norms of the society. I don’t know if what they think is against humanity, but they will never have bad plan for us. They will never plan anything for us that may become detrimental to any human.

In life, we always will have been blown by unseen, unheard and aimless hurricane, every day. To it neither can we see nor stop, yet our life will have been enslaved into the movement of this unusual cyclone. Perhaps, we will have been taken into the right destination. Perhaps, into the wrong one. Perhaps to the end. We never attempt to know, either. As we grow up into adulthood, a strange force bribes us to deviate from the norm. We are made to forget we once walked grasping the hands of our parents. We forget that we once took the food which mum chewed for us. How selfish are we to forget that we used to ask mum, dad and siblings to chew corns roasted and boiled for us! Those handicapped times when mum would hold the glass of water and gently place into our mouth; the times when she would push safe food into our mouth and then say soothing words to help us take enough amount-‘my son will eat all this and then become a great man’; the times when no matter if she was tired we cried and demanded to sleep on her lap and suck suckle on her like a hungry demon. How could we ever forget it? How easily, man?

Since the childhood to this day, they have been sewing each and every piece of dreams to realize a time when reality would emerge beautifully. They never went to schools yet they knew the value of education. With each threshold of age we crossed, they would stare at us and must have been whispering within their heart that we are growing. They also have certain dreams that they want to share with us, give them legs to move and breathe to exist. They want to live in the society with good comments and feed backs about their children. They want to prove to rest of the world that they have given us the best etiquette and discipline as a legacy for life time. To hang loose their head low among st the people in the crowd, they never expect.

If we were to grow into a selfish moron, I wish we never were born to them. If we ever go against their will in life, I know they will forgive us—because they are forgiving—but we are never forgiven. The guilt of the act shall loom on like sad clouds over us. To them the most desired thing they want is to see us get a good job, have their grandson and granddaughter to play with and help grasp their hand to walk as they age.

Therefore it becomes a responsibility of every son and daughter to align his/her life along the wishes of parents. Some noble souls have rightly said, “It is good to be important but is very important to be good”. Life would go by, but deep down into our heart, we will always have a corner of sin if we don’t wait to remember we are their offspring, the result of their sweats, and the testimony of their selfless dreams.

My mum and the true love

She was just fifteen when she got married with my 26 years old dad. A burden upon burden, she shifted herself from her home but not the adversities of life. She was orphaned at a very early age and she doesn’t remember how her parents looked like. After the death of her parents, she and rest of her siblings were raised by her paternal uncle. Her elder brother and middle brother were already into school. Poor her, she never even stepped the threshold of any school. How could she? No one supported her. Her uncle wanted her to remain home and help him.

A time came for as it comes to everyone in life. They say, marriage is a union of two souls. They pledge each other to remain together through the thick and thin of life. The Hindu culture compels a woman to abide by the value of a pinch of vermilion on the slit of hair. An oath a couple makes during the wedding has to be upheld until the time both souls depart. Such purity and truth embed in the wedding of a conservative Hindu couple. So it is for my mum.

Perhaps, fate had not stored in a life everyone desires for-a happy life. Back then, my dad was a spoilt brat. Being the elder and the dear one of my grandpa and grandma, he was a carefree man. Day in, day out, gambling used to keep him busy. Late at night, sometimes at 2 A.M, he used to return home. Every time, waiting for him to return home for dinner, it would become midnight. Sitting by fire, swallowing the swear word of my grandma, my mom would serve dinner to others and wait for my dad to return home. Beer and other intoxicants always took him away from the thought of being with family. May be he never understood the value of family-what it feels to eat with family. What it feels to come home early. In those days, never did he understand how his wife led life. Nor did any siblings of my mum know circumstances my mum was in.

I know how it feels to stay under the reign of a mother in law- early morning waking, together with the cock cross, preparing morning tea, feeding the cattle, plastering the floor with cow dung’s paste, chopping firewood and many more  household chores. These activities never keep a mother in-law satisfied for there will always be some space where she can scold. Starting from the control of salt to the cattle, a mother in-law follows autocratic leadership. In one way or the other, there will be an area where she can pour her anger and dissatisfaction on a daughter in-law. My mother was subjected to such tyranny of mother in law and the whistle blowers paternal aunts. From the salt, rice and oil to the cattle and money, they would keep their eye on my mum.

 No matter if it rained or the sun shone, there was no word called rest. From an early morning until late night, she used to work, suffer and get tired. Who cared if she was tired? A daughter in-law couldn’t sleep before everything was over for a night. She suffered with stomach ache, her painful period and everydays swear words of her mother-in-law. More than that, she suffered from the loneliness and the feeling of being alone. She must have had so many things that remained like knots, to tell to her husband. She must have had complaint about being a scapegoat in the family. She must have wanted to tell my dad that she was tired. However, to whom she wanted to let it be known the most, would never be home and even if he came home, came when she was deeply asleep and left home before she could even see. As a daughter-in-law, the pain and the agony that throb in the heart can be felt by none but herself. Bound by the norms, she can never speak what she wants to. As a daughter-in-law, I know how pathetic life seems but it goes unheeded.

Crumpled and then reshaped in to what she is now, is never a story anyone can narrate or read. Inspite of all the loopholes in relationship; Inspite of feeling alone and left out in life and inspite of travelling alone in life, my mother never complained about it. She moved like she never did before. She survived through the thick and thin of life. Perhaps, she never dreamt her life to be this way. Today, my father is the best in the world. He cares and earns for all of us in the family. Today, if I want to see anyone with awe, then it is my father who has been standing by my brothers and mom like a savior. Like a movie at the climax point, my life stands here. I don’t know what god and the fate have stored in for us but I will always pray to god for the better health and wellbeing of my parents. I want to prove that my parents never made an error of giving birth to me. My mother doesn’t have to do anything except work in the field. My dad buys all the food items needed at home. He looks after if we have enough money in the college.

This is true love. My mom waited for this time to come. She never gave up her hopes. Perhaps she never had such hopes in fate for today we have one of the best and happy families. I learned that time heals all the wounds in life; time is the remedy for hopes. True love always has the part we would always want it to remain but time waits for none. It happens towards the end. My dad has turned 64 now.