My Experience With The Ritualistic Part Of Hinduism

Ananya Banerjee
Sep 8, 2018 · 4 min read
“flag standing on establishment” by Sukhpreet Lotey on Unsplash

I grew up listening to mythological tales from my grandma. As a kid, I didn’t have many friends outside my school, and so when my grandma would come to visit me during the holidays, I would spend the whole day with her. The main reason I would be so eager for her arrival, were her stories. Be it how Krishna lifted mount Govardhan on his finger, or how he stole ‘makkhan’ from the gopis, or how Lord Shiva sits on the top of Mount Kailash in a deep meditative state, all of them were my favourite stories.

Yes, I am a Hindu. Hinduism, as you may know has many gods, and being a polytheistic religion, it has a very rich source of mythological tales. With that, we also have different kinds of rituals for every puja. These rituals are very elaborate and must be done with complete reverence.

My parents, on the other hand, are not religious, which is a great source of worry for my grandma. They believe in god, but my mom never encourages any sort of rituals in the house. She believes that true form of worship is done from the heart, and rituals play no role in it. However, she never stopped me from pursuing these religious matters.

I, being very interested in theology, took up many religious texts and studied them. Then I began to focus on rituals. They left me in awe. My grandma told me that rituals were performed to please the Gods. If they were pleased, they would give me something in return. But I was more interested in experiencing the ‘fun’ of performing these rituals that actually getting something in return.

My favourite god being Shiva, I settled for doing Shivratri. I began to ask a few people about these rituals, and what to actually do for them, and I got many answers, which varied a lot. My mom just laughed, and told me to follow any one of them. But I wanted it to be accurate so I ended up searching it in Google. It was useless as I got even more confused. In the end, I just picked up a few common things of the answer and went ahead.

First step was the fasting. I was only allowed to drink milk, and eat fruits and sweets. It was fine in the morning, but as the evening started to set in, I got extremely hungry. I drank two glasses of milk, and that made me feel guilty. Yes, I was allowed to drink it, but the point of this fast was to make a sacrifice, and somehow I ended up with my stomach full.

Next came the list of stuff, I would need for the rituals. It consisted things I had never even heard of. I went to the bazaar, and ended up finding them quite easily. Everyone seemed to be selling the required items for the puja.

The last and the hardest part was the real puja. I went to the mandir at night, and stood in the long line for more than two hours. When my turn came, I had to quickly pour themilk on the shivling, handover my thali of flowers and sweets which I got especially for the puja, and was quickly ushered out by the pandit, for the next person to come in. That felt terrible.

After about thirty minutes, another pandit came and gave me back my prasad. I was disheartened. After a whole day of fasting, I go to the mandir to pray and meditate, but I was ushered out even before I could even chant ‘Om Namah Shivaay’. All that trouble for this! I was so annoyed that I gave my prasad to a little girl sitting in the mandir and returned home. I still finished my fast and prayed at home.

I hoped to feel a spiritual high after finishing the puja, but all I felt was a sense of disappointment. Since then, I have never performed another ritual. This was three years ago, and while I still love studying religions, I don’t agree to the ritualistic part of it.

A good round of meditation, or just quietly praying in my room gives me a sense of peace and calm, which no puja ever gave me. So I agree with my mom here, true worship is done from the heart. it doesn’t require a special day nor a special place, nor any elaborate and complex set of rituals.

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