Yesterday we finished celebrating my dad's Sashtipoorthi. In other words it is the 60th b'day of my father according to the hindu calendar. it becomes significant because the cycle of life is said to have beome complete when a person touches the 60 year mark as he has gone through all stages of life such as bramhacharya, grihastha etc. So it is a commemorate achievement for the individual and I found out that not everybody gets the honor of a celebration of this stature.
It is typical of a social gathering where your near and dear, your loved and not so loved ones gather under one roof for about 2 to 3 days and attend numerous pujas and abhishekams amongst continual chanting of the vedas. The event is not short of a wedding and hence it is also called the 60th marriage. These are events that assert our rich tradition, its roots and like some people rave about, our "culture". I am supposed to have co-hosted the event along with my younger brother and got showered accolades for such a noble deed and such a great way of thanking our parents. But the whole celebration left me wondering if this is the culture that we need to preserve?
Our generation often gets criticized because we ask too many "Why" questions opposed to what our parents' generation did. We seek understanding hence we have to ask those why questions. Our generation has not stopped believing in God, all we ask for is a logic for the belief and to most people it is a threatening question because it questions their basic belief which they held so close to their hearts for good 40 - 45 years of their cognitive lives and because they have no idea what God is as they have followed what was being told to them. Hence there is a definite gap.
Let me go back to the function to assert my point. The celebration involves a lot of pujas. There was a rudra abhishekam conducted. All the so called believers of God had attended the function but took little interest in the abhishekam. Most of them knew the significance of it but that didnt arouse any interest in them to take part in it. Let me tell you a little bit about Rudra abhishekam. This is an offering given to Lord Shiva. The shiva lingam is cleansed using water, coconut water, milk and fruits under constant chanting of Rudram, the veda that has diferent names of Lord Shiva. Rudram is a very powerful mantra. If 3 or 4 people are chanting it in perfect synchronization and you actually pay attention just to the rhythm of the chanting you will experience a positive vibration in your body. The sound of the entire thing is ecstatic. The abhishekam itself is usually done in great detail as Lord Shiva is known to be a stickler for detail and doesn't like any gaps in the procedure in which offerings are given to him. That explains the logic why there are only 12 jyotirlingams in the entire world and seeing all of them is a mammoth task. Some of them open only for a small window of a few days during a year a la Amarnath and Kedarnath. And also you won’t find shiva lingams in people’s homes as it requires elaborate offerings everyday. So in other words for all worshipers of Lord Shiva (which consists of probably everyone in my close family) this is an event of pure ecstasy where their favorite lord is praised and they have an opportunity to be a part of it and witness it upclose. Amongst about 125 people who were a part of the entire sashtipoorthi 5 people attended the abhishekam. 25 people complained that they were unable to watch it from where they were sitting but refused to budge and go sit at the place where it was happening. These are all the people who blame our generation to be deteriorating and are fast moving towards atheism. What they probably don't know is God is never going to come to their homes to bless them because honestly as far as my knowledge goes in the past 1000 and odd years nobody has seen a flesh and blood Lord Shiva. God is an experience and our offerings are the way we create a platform to experience it.
Honestly speaking, my dad who was the protagonist of the event had other things in mind like whether the guests were being taken care of. My mom was trying to remember what was missing for the next set of pujas. My aunts were running helter skelter actually achieving nothing and my uncles were too busy socializing talking about how many people in the recent past have become hopeless in their lives and what they should have done with their lives instead. It felt like the whole function was being done by the purohits that too for themselves and hence if they did skip some details we would have had no idea about it. So when one of my young cousins asks his dad this question as to what’s happening and why is it happening, he may walk away with basic information about the whole thing and how significant it is in people’s lives and how lucky we are to be a part of it and how we don’t have to do anything about it because that’s exactly what his dad did.
My generation instead says I don’t know what the hell happens in a “Sashtipoorthi”. I instead would like to throw a party where everybody can socialize and have a good time and which is exactly the end we achieved in that function. I guess the gaps and the whys rarely get filled. So, the mascots of our culture, please learn and understand the “Whys” first for yourself and then to educate people. Probably then you can blame people for not following it. Rituals will continue to lose their significance if the essence is never understood or explained.
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