Skip to main content

Temples and Tragedies


Long ago, when our ancestors descended from the tree and started walking on the earth, we allowed religion to hijack everything from our entertainment to our morality, from our pains and joys to our gods and devils.  When the immensity of the cosmic mystery overwhelmed those primitive creatures, it was understandable that they sought solace in superstitions and rituals.  Today, when science has broken through most of the mysteries, revealing the principles of gravitation and quantum mechanics, unseating gods from their celestial thrones, replacing heaven and hell with black holes and stellar bodies, why does religion continue to inflict us with tragedies?

For details: The Hindu
The latest tragedy in a Kerala temple, like most other such tragedies in places of worship, is a man-made one.  The organisers and operators of the fireworks display flung all norms to the cosmic winds for the sake of enhancing the impressiveness of the show.  It’s a kind of competition.  Our temple festival must be more ostentatious than the festival of all other religious institutions in the neighbourhood.  The grander the display, the greater the religion!

We have to liberate ourselves from our snobbery first of all if such tragedies are to be avoided.  Not only firework displays, but also religious processions, conventions and a lot of other means are employed to show off that one’s own religion is capable of making more noise than the neighbour’s.  The greater the noise and grander the display, the more attractive is the religion!  In other words, religion is not really about religion but about our pretentiousness and its satellite vices.

Secondly, we have to liberate our gods from their bondage in our temples, churches and other such places.  When the gods are gone, perhaps we will learn to look within.  And discover the delights of simple humaneness which doesn’t need temples and fireworks.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Shrinidhi HandeApril 11, 2016 at 8:45 AM

    very unfortunate incident..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 10:18 AM

      Undoubtedly. So many lives lost. So many wounded seriously. Houses destroyed.

      Delete
  2. Kishor KApril 11, 2016 at 8:47 AM

    If the God is omnipresent, why look in temples? Never understood the concept, really.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 10:22 AM

      That's just the question. And the answer is that people are not looking for god really. It's about a lot of other things: social celebration, display of superiority, psychological comforts...

      Delete
  3. IndraniApril 11, 2016 at 10:13 AM

    Very tragic... some the pics were tear jerking ones. Hope they get well and recover from this trauma soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 10:23 AM

      In addition, I also hope that people learn the necessary lessons so that tragedy won't be repeated.

      Delete
  4. Amit AgarwalApril 11, 2016 at 11:44 AM

    Tragic indeed!
    'We have to liberate ourselves and our gods'..so wise and true!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 1:31 PM

      Evolution is a painfully slow process, Amit ji. Mutual liberation is possible only through mutation.

      Delete
  5. BikramApril 11, 2016 at 1:51 PM

    TOTALLY with you on LIBERATE OUR GODs.. yes we need to I think its time we the people did something too ..

    it is a tragedy such a incident happened..

    Bikram's

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 2:29 PM

      I'm happy to find more and more people who think like me. I used to wonder whether I was an odd man out.

      Delete
    2. BikramApril 11, 2016 at 4:14 PM

      No you are not, I am of the beleif that if we take religion out , people all over will be much more happier .. but then thats me ..

      Bikram's

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 5:52 PM

      Let our tribe increase, Bikram. Actually religion owes its popularity to herd mentality mostly. If the herd thinks secularism is superior to religionism we will be lucky.

      Delete
  6. Manisha SharmaApril 11, 2016 at 2:23 PM

    When the roof of the Puttingal Devi temple fell down, hundreds of people died, hundreds of people were injured, but in this all, where was God? Did he die under that roof, was he injured in that chaos or did he ran away?
    Did anyone try to find where God was?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 2:31 PM

      Your comment reminds me of what Albert Camus said when he saw a car run over a child, "Look, the heavens are silent!"

      Delete
  7. Ravish ManiApril 11, 2016 at 6:33 PM

    Yes, liberation is the only solution.

    ReplyDelete
  8. RakeshApril 11, 2016 at 6:42 PM

    I won't call it tragic or unfortunate. It's plain damned stupid! Brought on by bloody hypocrites! If it weren't for the lost lives, I'd have said that they were served right. But, do you think that they are going to learn from it? Of course not! There will be a bit of brouhaha, a few crocodile tears and everyone will gear up for a similar function on a grander stage. Bloody idiots!

    Only the Almighty will know when are we going to grow up! :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2016 at 7:04 PM

      They won't learn, no doubt. People never learn the real lessons.

      Delete
  9. HemaApril 11, 2016 at 9:46 PM

    I really agree with your last paragraph, 'to liberate' our gods from bondage. What a tragic incident!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 12, 2016 at 6:02 AM

      Just imagine how helpless god must have felt sitting imprisoned in that temple while the tragedy unfolded.

      Delete
  10. Shesha ChaturvediApril 12, 2016 at 12:12 AM

    90% of the man made calamities are due to the disturbances by religious zealots. What a pathetic state that people somewhere follow similar teachings and talk about same similar God who has made everything on earth and then he fights over what exactly His real name is... He just can't stand others with different opinion... Tragedy across the Globe, religion today is everything what is wasn't meant to be!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 12, 2016 at 6:05 AM

      Religion is the greatest cause of hatred, strife, violence, calamities... It's high time that mankind delivered itself from the nemesis called religion.

      Delete
  11. Vinay NagarajuApril 12, 2016 at 3:28 PM

    I like the coinage liberating our god Matheikal, it is such a shame that religion has become a matter of a societal pride than a personal thing. Kinda defeating the whole purpose of religion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 13, 2016 at 6:03 AM

      The purpose has been defeated already in various forms. What good does religion do today? I wonder.

      Delete
  12. CifarApril 12, 2016 at 4:19 PM

    this festival happened because temple authorities neglected denial of permissions backing by some political masters which didn't bother to hurt religious sentiments in election time but are cool now to gain from this tragedy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 13, 2016 at 6:05 AM

      The election plays a vital role, you're right. Mr Modi and Mr Gandhi rushed to the spot because of the election.

      Delete
  13. KalpanaApril 17, 2016 at 8:04 PM

    This was so sad, such a waste of life and all because of a lack of regard for safety.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Indian Knowledge Systems

Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book back in 2018 to explore the paradoxes that constitute the man called Narendra Modi. Paradoxes dominate present Indian politics. One of them is what’s called the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). What constitute the paradox here are two parallel realities: one genuinely valuable, and the other deeply regressive. The contributions of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta to mathematics, Panini to linguistics, Vedanta to philosophy, and Ayurveda to medicine are genuine traditions that may deserve due attention. But there’s a hijacked version of IKS which is a hilariously, if not villainously, political project. Much of what is now packaged as IKS in government documents, school curricula, and propaganda includes mythological claims treated as historical facts, pseudoscience (e.g., Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana as a real aircraft or Ganesha’s trunk as a product of plastic surgery), astrology replacing astronomy, ritualism replacing reasoning, attempts to invent the r...
17 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

Ghost with a Cat

It was about midnight when Kuriako stopped his car near the roadside eatery known as thattukada in Kerala. He still had another 27 kilometres to go, according to Google Map. Since Google Map had taken him to nowhere lands many a time, Kuriako didn’t commit himself much to that technology. He would rather rely on wayside shopkeepers. Moreover, he needed a cup of lemon tea. ‘How far is Anakkad from here?’ Kuriako asked the tea-vendor. Anakkad is where his friend Varghese lived. The two friends would be meeting after many years now. Both had taken voluntary retirement five years ago from their tedious and rather absurd clerical jobs in a government industry and hadn’t met each other ever since. Varghese abandoned all connection with human civilisation, which he viewed as savagery of the most brutal sort, and went to live in a forest with only the hill tribe people in the neighbourhood. The tribal folk didn’t bother him at all; they had their own occupations. Varghese bought a plot ...
8 comments
Read more