Skip to main content

Gods must be Crazy – X

(Warning --Blasphemous content ahead. Read at your own risk!)

__

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time”

– Friedrich Nietzsche


HE looked down the heavens, and had a hearty laugh. The long serpentine queue was moving slowly. With his divine brain HE calculated that mean queue length was nearly 600 and mean service time was 150 per hour. That meant people waited an average of four hours just to have a look at his statue, be awestruck for few moments, seek blessings and ultimately offered gifts in cash and kind. The PR agents in form of the priests in the temple collected them ostensibly for benefit of masses. The PR agents used various kinds of tactics and strategies to up the number of visitors; most important being the fear appeal which is often used by advertising agencies, in which the ill effects of not worshipping the deity for him possessing extraordinary supernatural powers was propagated.

The marketing channel to improve the number of visitors worked in various ways. The head priests were at the topmost level of the hierarchy. Next came the priests who formed bulk of sales force and also doubled as PR agents, each associated with a fixed set of people who were divided as per their caste. Caste system was sacrosanct. Ill effects of not following it were … well … no one knew as no one dared to challenge it. The PR agents also came in handy while collecting all the gifts – cash and kind, so that HE could bask in luxury. Of course, PR agents got a fair share of the pie. After all HE never played dice with universe!

Time and time again reinforcements were given regularly in form of few stray punishments. For example that lady who said that she wouldn’t offer a generous bounty to the priests and won’t sing aartis to please HIM … She didn’t know that in few days she would be nursing a fractured hand for 3 months after a near fatal accident. Or that guy who called everything a form of ‘ego massage’ and sycophancy … little did he know that in few days his girlfriend would ditch him. And that businessman who believed in some other deity and not HIM was to suffer huge losses in coming days. These … and many other stories. After all, how dare they question things! Therefore, the punishments were apt … actually they were well deserved. Such people needed to be taught a lesson.

As of now, it was the peak season. After all it was his birthday in few days time. That day HE would relish in tones of milk, water, bhaang, food, sweets, flowers and god knows which all things. HE would indulge in revelry, enjoy all the sacrifices, create folklores around him and be the center of attraction that day. Then the peak rush to the holy place would subside though people would continue to throng the pace in thousands. HE shall continue to be served as he was being served before … today, tomorrow, and ever after.

Comments

Post a Comment

Shop @ Amazon

Popular posts from this blog

The story behind credit card debts & personal loans

Any one with even an iota of interest in personal finance & its workings would probably know that credit card debts and personal loans are usually the worst kinds of debt traps that you can fall into. Yet many people fall into that trap again and again. Many people do come out of it eventually but some don't & this becomes a part of their "lifestyle". That you are eventually paying much more than you need to, if you default on credit card payments intentionally or unintentionally (probably @ 36 % per annum or something similar) or take a personal loan (say, @ 12% per annum or so) is not hard to fathom. However behind these numbers, there may be even a deeper story - that usually that of not having control over expenses or not having created a buffer amount. While there may be some pressing need like unplanned or recurring medical expenses which fuels sudden demand of money or an unexpected job loss, in many other cases this need may be fueled by lack of plani...
12 comments
Read more

Somewhere @ Nowhere - The Book

FINALLY .... After a tryst with so-called-creativity, I have come up with a book -  Somewhere @ Nowhere. You can have a sneak peek at the story & a few pages from the publisher's website and order the same & get it home delivered anywhere in India/ Abroad. Details as mentioned below- - Preview and get the book home delivered from HERE Also, you can join the following groups - - Orkut Community - Facebook Page Hope you like the work. Would appreciate a feedback. Till then ... Happy Reading!!! And yeah, please spread the word (relying on word of mouth & word of blog publicity) :-) ___ Update (18/02/2010) - Thanks for the initial response to the book :) Update2 (25/ 02/ 2010) - Thanks for the feedbacks on the book those who have read it. (hope to get a feedback by others soon). Encourages me to overcome inertia and write more! Meanwhile, those who ask for why is it currently not available in traditional retail outlets - well, I hope it wil...
15 comments
Read more

An area of darkness ?

The title of this post finds its origins in a novel with simlar name written by VS Naipaul. Set in India, some 40 years ago or so, this is a kind of travelogue of author's brief stay in India where he found it to be full of superstitions, ignorance and darkness! Many decades and many MNCs and malls later, few parts of India seemed to have chucked off that tag, but there are many places that haven't and continue to remain shrouded in ignorance. Move few hours away from a city, travel in a second class train compartment or a dilapidated state transport bus and you get to see the dark underbelly of India Shining. As one of the characters in the movie Rang De Basanti says "Yahan zinda rehne ki jung mein logo ki zindagiyan nikal jaati hai" . So true it seems! My day today was spent being kind of lost in similar thoughts. To start with, I when I boarded the ST bus, a woman was wailing. She may be in her 20s or something, but she was crying in some peculiar musical tone. At...
13 comments
Read more

Snaps from The Himalayas

Some glimpses of one of the best landscapes in the country. Why long for Alps when our own old, enigmatic yet beautiful Himalayas provide such magnificent and picturesque sceneries!! Have a look. Enjoy. Location - Garhwal Region, Himalayas which lie in the state of Uttrakhand.
10 comments
Read more

Classifying people

One of the important tools used by marketers for identifying potential market is market segmentation, in which subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics are grouped together. Using similar concept, people can be segmented based upon their basic philosophy or their basic approach towards life. It might be extremely difficult, as not all may express their beliefs openly. Maybe few sort of weird approaches mentioned below might help. One such method can be segmenting on basis of their movie or book preferences. For example a person whose favorite book is The Fountainhead or 1984 is likely to be different from a person whose favorite books include Sidney Sheldon and likes. Or a person who likes reading The Catcher in the Rye over and over again might be different from the one who prefers Eric Segal instead! Similarly a person whose favorite movies includes likes of Jaane bhi do Yaaron or Rang de Basanti would be different from a person relishing Suraj Bar...
9 comments
Read more