Relevance of Saraswati pooja/Vijayadasami.
TweetI am not a religious person.But my family is and I go along with the motions on every festival day so they are happy. I don’t loose anything by playing along.
But as I go through the motions my mind keeps thinking “Is this all a farce or could there be something logical behind it?”.
Some of my hypothesis flowing below.
In olden days I don’t know if there was a concept of weekdays/weekends existed, I doubt it (my historical ignorance exists here). To me a farmer used to work all days to attend to his farm.He needed a rest day to sit back relax.He needed a day off to take care of tools, on a normal workday he never gets that chance ( ala take you time off to sharpen the axes ).
In today’s world I guess we don’t need a Vijaydasami from a practical perspective ( okay I this might start a religious war 🙂 ). But as people around are doing it and we get a day-off.Maybe it is a good time to sit back and thank the tools we use and show our gratitude towards them. Being an IT guy I can think of operating systems,development languages and hardware which are tools to me. I could actually spend time on this to move those 100 unread mails and organize my inbox. I remove those bulky downloads which I had done to be read later but the later never came.Take backups of my data/emails. How many times have we rued the fact that we did not have backups.
Last but not the least , mentally thank all the people/companies which make software, those technical guys who spend hours writing blogs, pod-casts making our life simpler. A day to thank and show gratitude to all who help us provide for ourselves and family. ( Religious folks of course do thanks their favourite deity.)
Happy Vijayadasami.
LOL. Good one Kumaran. Can you say no to all those yummy feasts, new clothes? And when they ask to keep books near Saraswathi patam(photo frame) rather than studying?
I cannot forget the days when my brother and I used to check the progress report and specifically keep the subjects where I fared poor in the last month’s unit tests 😉
Vamsi,
I was not that innovative to selectively keep poor scoring books. Yes as a kid I could “offically” not study one day but other days anyways I did it unofficially. ha ha ha. I was miserable at academics.
I can’t say no to feasts even topday, remember as I said above “I do play along” that has its benefits. 😉
I had the same questions on my mind as well ! I didnt quite think of the ‘weekends in an earlier time’ ! But i did think that in the modern day world, such things take centre stage.
And i guess, the biggest prayer that needs to go out is to the human mind ! That can still do better with a holiday ! And stay home doing nothing ! Not even rearranging the mail box !
🙂
Lovely post !
Thanks Kavi.
Vijayadhasami-Ahh my parents always urge me to do a thing exactly on this day and it is considered to be an auspicious day and ofcourse festives are always enriched with sumptuous delicacies 🙂
Kumaran,
I think, the weekends are present only in the corporatised environments. Earlier, it was the government which acted as single biggest corporate.. now there are so many corporate companies available..
As you said, there are no weekends in the traditional society.. The work is done till it requires to complete, and then a break, usually as a religious function.
I witnessed the saraswathi pooja done by most of the small industries in my native, and it was more than a religious function.. it was a religious celebration, where both cine songs and bhakthi songs were played.
I doubt, if most of those celebrating this festival, will be aware of the reasons that you have mentioned.. Its a social habit, that is not done based on reasons.
Any way.. Its a quite introspecting post..
I think that navarathiri symbolically reminds that women posses significant courage, wealth and brain. Kumara, If you want more of any of the above you have to observe Navarathiry.
Nice post Kumaran. If my readings of history are correct, many of the festivals coincided with the agricultural calendar – sowing, harvesting etc. In other words, they had to indicate to a group of people, when to do these activities. This may have been the original need for a festival to mark these occasions as well as celebrate them. As for the navarathri in specific, it appears that 10 days were added to adjust the calendar.
Your view on using these festivals to take rest and have fun seems logical as well.
Annapoorni,
Agree, Eating well is fatal attraction during festivals.
Senthil,
thanks for comments.
Mahendran,
An interesting perspective about navarathiri. It good that our culture inherently treated women with lot of respect. But the chauvinistic male practitioners have twisted it.
Sukumar,
Thanks for encouragement.
Yes good point, I guess these festivals are similar to milestones in project management. Festivals are phase completion parties. 🙂 me and my IT analogies.
good post. nice thinking..! 🙂
I am trying this out for the first time. I have seen the saswingi discussions in the past. How do I join the group. Thanks.
Something I have to add about Saraswati is the jain connection. Any takers.