More power to prayer?

Just click the mouse to visit your favourite Murugan temple at Palani or perform a 'puja' on screen to fulfil your vows. E-pujas are an addition to the virtual world which offers shortcuts to God, writes VISA RAVINDRAN.

A FRIEND SENT me an attachment saved on my desktop that enables me to conduct a mini Ganesh puja anytime I so desire. At the click of the mouse a Ganesha image appears on the screen, more clicks ensure a popular shloka, adding sound bytes for authenticity. Flowers get strewn on the idol, incense smoke rises, bells ring, sandalpaste gets applied on the divine forehead and the flames of the aarthi are taken around the image. Again, the click of the mouse can control the sound, the volume, the duration and the length of the 'puja' but fortunately the ardour or lack of it while conducting it/clicking the mouse continues to be in my hands as of now. But is it worship? Or is it just another gimmick? If it is just a gimmick, is it a better one than so many others since it turns one's attention godward, or is it worse because it reduces even God to another electronic axis? To me it is amusing, but there is always a faint tinge of regret that the spiritual has been reduced to this - merely two- dimensional and electronically-powered.

The same opposing ideas make one wonder whether this is peculiarly suited to the Chennai ethos or violently militates against it. Going to temples, performing pujas at home, the incense, the flowers and the subtle perfume of sandal paste and camphor informed our daily lives but, today, one often hears housewives lamenting that they have a saligramam in their home to which they are unable to offer puja in the accepted mode because the younger generation has not learnt how and their own generation is caught in a temporal whirl that leaves no time for spiritual niceties. Add to this the anxiety of the diaspora worrying about the next generation growing up away from this fading ethos altogether and their own contemporaries ruing their distance from it, and you have just the circumstances that give rise to the c2G axis or the puja portals that have come in with ingenious, celestial offerings.

Pujas online offer several services. There are 'specials' for parents, children, brother/sister, 'other loved ones', events like birthdays, anniversaries, graduation, 'more occasions', 'packages' like pujas that can be offered at Navagraha sthalas, Ashtalakshmi kshetrams or Murugan temples, and you can choose one or all, at random or in sequence - piety and ardour unlimited and conveniently programmed. Deity-wise and state-wise lists of temples, weekly and monthly pujas, 'homams' and 'shraaddhas' are all on offer. Trimurthi and Trishakti are not forgotten and astrologers are available online to consult with and arrive at solutions to problems. And, of course, you can 'track your order'. An online store can send you stands, bells, lamps, beads, idols, portraits, and vessels for worship, the prices given clearly in dollars and rupees, with the bottomline after each description reading 'buy this product'. I was reminded of a seriously-materialistic friend of mine who, in a sudden fit of religiosity, wanted to cultivate detachment and so went on a pilgrimage. A fortnight later, when she returned home, the first thing she said to me was: "I didn't know good rudrakshams were so expensive. I believe the best ones come from Nepal and they cost the earth." I burst out laughing. Fortunately she had a sense of humour that caused her to join in. Her materialism was still intact after the trip and even rudrakshams - that symbol of 'sanyas' - were looked at from the point of their material value!

Yet even shortcuts to God have a place in a frenetically-paced world which doesn't pause for anything, when loneliness and separation add an edge to old age, sickness and suffering. When prasadam arranged by your niece in Oklahoma or Helsinki reaches you nursing a broken leg in Tiruninravur or Pattiveeranpatti, of course, it covers you in more warmth and family feeling than a prosaic get-well card would. She has remembered you, your birth star (for that archanai), your soft corner for that particular Sivan kovil or the fact that the last time you met here you mentioned that the planets seem to make you accident-prone and had to be propitiated... The feel good factor is really high and technology has saved time and effort and your niece did not have to trouble anybody else to do this for her. When I ran into an elderly friend at the orthopaedists' and she told me that she was there for physiotherapy for oedema of the knee but that neither the delayed diagnosis nor the pain had stopped her from climbing up the Tirupathi hills to offer worship, I wondered whether e- pujas could ever be an alternative to someone like her even under those circumstances. Because 'shrama' and 'shraddha' (effort and devotion) also form intricate threads of worship.

In a commercial world of call centres, where phoney accents and fake identities are deliberately developed to give a feel of the real thing, where convenience is the catchall motivator, where a little bhakthi is better than nothing and the marketplace rules that when celestial bargains are commercially-viable and also serve a sizable segment that wants this compromise and is willing to pay for it, e-pujas are another addition to the virtual world that is always raising questions to which judicial use of technology is the only answer. So long as man's piety is not measured in 'hits' or sound bytes the perfumeless flowers and the electronic 'arathies' will have their place too.

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