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Showing posts with the label Chaar Dham

It's how the divine asks us to change

This was nearly 15 years ago, we were travelling to the higher reaches of Badrinath and on the way back we went into a restaurant just outside the temple. We asked for some cow milk and told the owner to be doubly sure that it was cow milk and not powdered milk; he assured us and went into the kitchen. We waited for 10 minutes and then I decided to take a look in the kitchen. Inside to my surprise, I saw him boiling water and adding powdered milk to it! On confronting, he cheekily replied, “Now where do I get cows here?” I told him that if you people won’t send your cows to the butchers then you would have them and your character would be devik and not asuric, for this is what you people have become. How can you fool people at the dham of Vishnu? Another time on my visit to Kedarnath, I found families thronging the shrine in a picnic and holiday mood, filmi songs blaring and card parties galore. Inside the dharamshalas surrounding the shrine, people dressed as Shiva waving their tr...