Theme of the blog: I have put an auto response message to the senders of Happy Dashain mass emails requesting them not to send any such emails next time. Plus, questions on loneliness and on Ram Ravan dilemma.
Once I had read a news report about a website called tired.com that talked about people’s responses to the only question posed by the site on the middle of the page: “Are you tired? Tell us why.” The answers, according to the report, aren’t published on the site and the report was based on the journalist’s interview with the owner of the site and samplings of the emails that were sent to the site. I haven’t visited the site since the day I read that news but today I am posing similar questions here: What do you do: When you don’t want to talk to anyone? When feel lonely but don’t want to mingle with anyone? If you want to answer, feel free to use the form below though I must assert that I completely retain the right to publish or reject the response(s). Or, may be I will write a news story based on ’em! [Okay, I just visited the site and found that it’s same: there are only two lines on the home page that I have already mentioned and the word “us” links to the email address tired@tired.com]
Anyway, that’s it. Now the Dashain dilemma. Some of you might have noticed that whenever you email me you receive an auto response on Dashain subhakamana. After getting a barrage of Happy Dashain emails that are sent to many by the senders (CCing or BCCing the same message to dozens), I decided to put the auto response requesting the sender not to send any of such emails to me from next time. I don’t have any concrete reason (or may be I don’t want to put that up here now) but I just don’t like receiving Happy Dashain mass emails. Almost all of the emails that I received this year are identical in nature, no special creativity in them and, I guess, many senders set those emails because it’s easy to send and it’s free to send. Even if there is huge amount of space in the inbox these days, I don’t see any reason to let them be in my inbox. So I deleted ’em all, no offence to those who sent those emails btw.
I am certainly not an irreligious person but definitely not religiously active too. For me Dashains come and go. I wonder how many people do really have the sound knowledge about the religious idea behind such festivals. Ram killed Ravan and wanted to celebrate. Is that all? What wrong Ravan did except that he took away Sita, Ram’s wife? Sounds like THE God created that abduction incident to set up an excuse to invade Lanka and kill Ravan. I have heard that Hindu people in South India (and in Sri Lanka?) revere Ravan just like Hindu people in North India and in Nepal hate him (and revere Ram). There was this huge controversy in India recently about the Rama Sethu thing. Some said Ram was a mythical character while others firmly believed him as God. The Aryans versus Dravidian conflict? Again, I have very limited knowledge about that. But I wonder why some people’s God is other’s devil and vice versa. Is it all about culture only? Do I have to hate Ravan just because I am taught that he was bad and wasn’t told the story from his (Dravidian) perspective?
Anyway my point is I am not a religiously active person and I have equal faith in all religion. I am Hindu because I was raised the Hindu way. I didn’t choose any religion rather religion chose me as its ‘follower’ which I am not. But I love putting tika, the red mixture of rice, curd, vermilion powder and sugar (to make that sticky), on my forehead every now and then, especially on the day of Tika in Dashain. That looks beautiful. By the way, Happy Dashain! (At least you don’t have to delete that because that’s stored in the server space I pay for to host the words that I type in this site.)
Related blogs (from WSJ archives):
1. The Day in Office, After Dashain
2. Dinner on the Dashain Eve
Dinesh Wagle on Nepali Society 