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When prayer is a misnomer !!!

No. The answer would be a plain NO. If you ask me, am an atheist. Maybe, I don’t wear it by my neck, but asking Him for a favour is something I don’t endorse. If I may quote a certain Mr. Aakar Patel, the basic idea of worshipping God is like bribing. In his article in the Mint, dated 3^rd July, 2009 (http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/07/02203128/Why-Indians-don8217t-give-b.html), Mr.Patel writes “Why don’t we worship Brahma? We know he’s part of the Hindu trinity as the creator, but we worship Vishnu, manager of the cosmos, and Shiva, its eventual destroyer.” The reason is simple. You pray only to that God who can fulfill your wish. A Give-and-Take-policy. A Temple of Brahma? Nope. A Temple of Shiva?  By scores. Reason self-explanatory. Anyways, that’s a topic meant for some other day. Today we talk about the earthly-mortals and a misnomer called prayer.

I remember a funny  sms.

There was an old man sitting on his porch watching the rain fall. Pretty soon the water was coming over the porch and into the house.

 The old man was still sitting there when a rescue boat came and the people on board said, "You can't stay here you have to come with us."

 The old man replied, "No, God will save me." So the boat left. A little while later the water was up to the second floor, and another rescue boat came, and again told the old man he had to come with them.

 The old man again replied, "God will save me." So the boat left him again.

 An hour later the water was up to the roof and a third rescue boat approached the old man, and tried to get him to come with them.

 Again the old man refused to leave stating that, "God will grant a miracle & save him." So the boat left him again.

 Soon after, the man drowns and goes to heaven, and when he sees God he asks him, "Why didn't you save me? I thought you would graNT me a miracle and you have let me down."

 God replied, "You idiot, I don't know what you're complaining about. I sent three boats after you!!"

The SMS had its five-minutes-of-fame, made its journey round the Sun and rode into oblivion. But the moral remains aeonian. Your prayer will find an answer only when you act towards realizing it. You need to walk till the end of the rainbow to get your pot of gold. There’s no Khushiyon-ki-Home-Delivery of that pot. There’s no short-cut. Simple. Period. A prayer will only get materialized when it meets a real effort in achieving the desired result. Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer, so goes the saying. Drawing a thread from that, until the hands work, the prayers will never come alive.

A real-life incident for you all, as an appetizer.

The boy and the girl love each other. They want to get married. But a family fall-out prevents that from happening. Balaji-serialesque events unfold. Now, after a break-up, they are separate yet their personal boulevard is not decorated with shards of broken dreams. They still dream of getting married. The girl keeps visiting the famous, overtly over-hyped temples and mosques all across the country. He lives in seclusion in a sparsely-populated part of India to stay away from her. They will not patch up. They will not be each other’s pillar of strength. They will not make up and fight the world in unison. Yet, both will live, both will pray for their marriage. And they will expect their prayers to be the miracle the above-mentioned old man always dreamt of. Strange world it is!!!

You teach a man to fish, he’ll feed himself for a day; give him a religion and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish. People should realize real prayer bears fruit when we work towards it. An escaped slave once told – “I prayed for 20 years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

Wake up guys !!!


(image courtesy: http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://wiki.hl7.org/images/8/83/Arb_work_in_progress.jpg&imgrefurl=http://wiki.hl7.org/index.php%3Ftitle%3DHl7_Internal_Architecture&usg=__Fp18eTOHlakvXLZ5uytuuR5nbMM=&h=762&w=640&sz=83&hl=en&start=12&sig2=0yBY9cMSqM9aR57CqZSHyA&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=3QEGkWaQihI2EM:&tbnh=142&tbnw=119&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dwork%2Bimages%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D644%26tbm%3Disch&ei=vTPgTffjMcn3rQfn2c2ODw&biw=1366&bih=644 )