There are
people who go on a pilgrimage in the hope of earning merits. Nothing deters
them and they undertake such pilgrimage year after year, believing that they
are positively better. I heard of one believer, who was found to be eating from
the garbage piled at the corner of a temple at a religious place, with the
conviction that nothing would happen to him. Nothing did. There are others at
the same time, and they are in majority, who would dismiss such hearsays as
pure rubbish. Without going into the right or the wrong of the issue, let me
just try to write down here how day 3 at Puri had a purifying impact on yours
truly.
We went to
the Jagannath temple in the morning of the 23rd of January for darshan
(a look at the image of the Lord). Kaltu’s words on the previous night that he
had sent back someone who came up to our room in the ashram, claiming to be the
panda (priest) had me worried. My
dearest nephew sent him packing, taking him to be one of the hoaxes, who make
similar claims to make life miserable for visitors like us!
So when I
reminded Swamiji (the head of BSS, Puri) in the wee hours of the morning of the
23rd about the panda, he
called out,” Ekhane ashramer panda ke achhen?” (Who all are the Ashram’s pandas
here?) and two hands were raised almost immediately afterwards in response from
the group at the gate. Finally, we accompanied a short-statured, middle-aged
man called Jagannath Mahapatra. He led us to the temple, walking all along by his cycle,
providing us with all kinds of information about the temple and Lord Jagannath
non-stop, in his Oriya mixed Bengali, or was it the other way round?
By then we
had arrived near the main gate of the temple. At his request, we took off our foot
wears and washed our feet in warm water on a raised platform on the left-hand
side of the temple. The huge clay images of Hanuman and one of the Kaurava
brothers greeted us solemnly. I was more drawn to the white and the black
horses made of clay, at the entrance of the gate. Later on, Mr.Jagannath told
us that the horses represent artha (wealth or affluence) like the other animals symbolizing other earthly cravings, at the three other entrances. Besides
the horses at the entrance, the other thing that took my breath away, was the
man with the brisk, business-like manner at the counter our panda had led us
to. Letting us a quick read-through the list containing the various prices at
which Lord Jagannath could be worshipped, he informed us, to our dismay, that
the puja of Jagannath alone would cost something like Rs.220/-. We were
dismayed by the information as we had decided to offer pujas on behalf of a lot
of our relatives. We had to discard any thought of that as quickly as a flicker
of a lamp. Naturally, after a quick consultion with the other adult members of
the group, we decided to go for the amount priced at Rs.440/- plus taxes or
whatever, which would cover up almost all the three main deities.
Our panda-cum-guide
in the meantime, had forced his way inside the main temple. With his hands
spread around us like an umbrella, he headed us off to a corner, where
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the great religious preacher of Bengal, once stood during
his visit to Jagannathdham in the late 15th century and where on the wall his fingerprints along with
his footprint on the floor, are visible even today. Mr.Mahapatra made us chant
some mantras in praise of the Lord. The next moment spreading my arms up in a
pose so characteristic of Chaitanya Dev, I followed the frenzied mob for a
closer look at the image of Lord Jagannath. Thanks to our panda, each member of
our team was blessed with a proper darshan.
The next
hour or so was spent in going round from one temple to another dedicated to a
multitude of Hindu gods and goddesses. I do not remember much about those
deities excepting the time he stopped on the round, to point to the top of the
temple, telling us that each morning, someone from the paid-staff of the temple,
has to go up to the Chakra atop, to raise the flag to start the day’s
proceedings. When I expressed my surprise at the risk involved, especially for
someone who has to go up, sometime on his knees and sometime on all fours like
an acrobat, he took genuine offence remarking that since the time the practice
started, no such untoward incident has ever happened, nor will in the distant
future, by His grace!
His faith made me shrink with a feeling of
guilt. My liberal upbringing has taught me not to take anything for granted and
I am sorry to say I had my doubts even about the panda (May be, my previous
encounter with them way back in the late 80s, when I visited Jagannathdham for
the first time along with my Ma and Susomadi, had left not too favourable an
impression on my impressible mind). I was worried if we could get anything
worth mentioning as prasad! I also had my doubt about how
much the panda would try to jab from us for the darshan.
I would like
to pen off here with two other notable incidents of the day. Firstly, when
Kaltu and I decided to have tea from the stall on the top of the flight of
steps leading down to the sea from the centre of Swargadwar. We made friends with the man and
his wife having tea there. The reluctant man opened up gradually to tell us
that there are some tour operators organizing bus trips to Puri even from
places like Dhakuria in Kolkata. The wife then confided in us that during their stay in the holy place, they visited
the temple on a daily basis without the menace of the pandas. Opening the small basket she held in her hand, she next
informed us that she had bought the prasad for only Rs.51/- from somewhere
inside the temple.
The second
incident happened near another tea stall we visited daily in the evening. As we
were discussing our visit to the temple, we could not help sounding rather
depressed at the way we were made to pay the exorbitant price for the darshan and prasad.
I was very critical of the panda, not even sparing the ashram in the process.
The lady selling tea sided with us, expressing the views that gone are the days
when Puri was a place of pure bliss. The holy place, with all its elements like
the environment, the foods and even the water of the sea, has become polluted
over the years due to the materialistic nature of some people and so on.
Back in the
ashram, it was time to do some soul-searching. The self=reflections made me
realize two things about me. I learnt about my suspicious self, the fact that I
did not think favourably about outsiders, expecting them to cause us great harm
and dismay at every given opportunity. And instead of being grateful to people
for their help and assistance, I have the habit of criticising them no ends.
I also realised that these may be the reasons why people are equally suspicious
and critical of me. A case of ‘what goes around, comes around’, I guess.
To be
continued …
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