"Surya grahan ke dauran kya kiya jaye aur kya na kiya jaye, is sab k baare mein vistaar se bataenge ek chhote se break ke baad.Dekhte rahiye....;Grahan k samay ghar k bahar na niklein, kuch na khayein, blah nlah blah, magar yadi aap bimar hain, aur vridh aur bachchon k liye maaf hai...".One news channel invited a "scientist" ( I am suspicious of her credentials) who intertwined the solar energy and lunar energy with the inner spiritual energy inside all human beings that "fluctuate" during the eclipse and so people shouldn't eat during the eclipse!
My mind is numb with the same words repeated the whole day through and through. You see the usual case is that I want to see the news, while my mother would rather watch her daily soaps, but for the past two days I have been literally begging her to change the news channel, for any soap, even the boring information channel!
The news channels regularly invite ancient looking astrologers asking about how best should one spend their day in order to avoid the "consequences", but this becomes unbearable around eclipses. To top it, even my favorite business news channel had invited an astrologer to predict the effect of the eclipse on the stock markets, and what mantras the traders should utter to gain profit today. For all I care, the only effect to watch out is the loss of productivity due to people sitting at their homes, which will impact the GDP.
This however raises a more significant question over the spirituality in our country. I am ok with being spiritual as long as it doesn't affect my daily routine in a significant manner. But, in today's consumer driven world, the news channels are surely showing what makes people stick to their TV sets. This means, there is a significant audience for these programmes. IT leads to a much bigger question. Has the average Indian become more religious or spiritual over the last decades?
That led me to think, how does one define religion and spirituality. In a religion like Hinduism, which virtually has no set rules, someone who goes to temple once a month is no less religious then the one who daily chants a thousand shlokas a day. From what I gathered by asking elders about the kind of news in the last decade, I am told that the doordarshan was least concerned with all this, it would just show a clipping of the solar eclipse and that was it, and that's how it should be today. I don't think any more superstition is going to do any good to anyone.
My mind is numb with the same words repeated the whole day through and through. You see the usual case is that I want to see the news, while my mother would rather watch her daily soaps, but for the past two days I have been literally begging her to change the news channel, for any soap, even the boring information channel!
The news channels regularly invite ancient looking astrologers asking about how best should one spend their day in order to avoid the "consequences", but this becomes unbearable around eclipses. To top it, even my favorite business news channel had invited an astrologer to predict the effect of the eclipse on the stock markets, and what mantras the traders should utter to gain profit today. For all I care, the only effect to watch out is the loss of productivity due to people sitting at their homes, which will impact the GDP.
This however raises a more significant question over the spirituality in our country. I am ok with being spiritual as long as it doesn't affect my daily routine in a significant manner. But, in today's consumer driven world, the news channels are surely showing what makes people stick to their TV sets. This means, there is a significant audience for these programmes. IT leads to a much bigger question. Has the average Indian become more religious or spiritual over the last decades?
That led me to think, how does one define religion and spirituality. In a religion like Hinduism, which virtually has no set rules, someone who goes to temple once a month is no less religious then the one who daily chants a thousand shlokas a day. From what I gathered by asking elders about the kind of news in the last decade, I am told that the doordarshan was least concerned with all this, it would just show a clipping of the solar eclipse and that was it, and that's how it should be today. I don't think any more superstition is going to do any good to anyone.
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