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Virtual worship
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People on the move offer pooja on their mobiles and SMS gods to friends these days, discovers BHUMIKA K.
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PHOTO: S. SUBRAMANIUM
DOWNLOAD THE DEITY You can now connect with the good Lord on your cell.
God is omnipresent and omnipotent. Yes.
Everyone's seeking solace in their God just before rushing to work. Yes.
He's becoming more ubiquitous now with spirituality of a certain kind on everyone's mind. Yes.
I mean he's everywhere — on wallpapers, screensavers, virtual pooja rooms on the Internet, apart from being in temples and our hearts. Yes.
Now He's also on your mobile handset, making it convenient for you to pray. Yes?
It's God on the move, man, not God stuck in a groove.
It kind of reminds you of a Govinda movie. Where he's in a tearing hurry to get to work after having woken up late and brushes, combs, clips his nose hair and changes into his suit — all while he's driving himself to work. (Mr. Bean does it with far superior and mirthful effect though.) If it was way back in the '90s, Bollywood would have probably shown Govinda doing pooja on his mobile and a saashtaang in his car, you know?
"You see, God, sorry I'm in a rush today. Gotta go meet my friends. Hope you don't mind if I offer some flowers and mangalarati or say Amen on the phone while the driver chauffeurs me through the careening traffic, right?"
It's an age when everything is about "the connect". You connect with the good Lord on your cell, darling. It's trendy that way.
Take Mauj's spirituality channel. Not on TV, but on the mobile. Mauj is a wireless service content provider set to get you in touch with your spiritual side because you're the kind that refuses to switch your cell off even in a place of worship. Anyways, if you download some of this spiritual content, you can pray to Ganesha, Hanuman, Tirupati Balaji, Vishnu, Ram, Shiva, Durga Ma, Jesus Christ, Guru Nanak and Sai Baba through wallpapers, animation, colour logos, themes and ringtones.
There are currently five pooja or "prayer applications". Yes sir, prayers are now applications. (There certainly were always applications, of course, but of a different kind — God please make my son pass his 10th standard exam; God please give me a promotion this year... ) But these applications allow you to shower God with water, light the lamp, offer flowers and garlands, apply kumkum and akshata, ring bells, offer naivaidyam, do dhoop aarti — all at the jab of a few buttons. There's a customised Lakshmi pooja. You can matha teko at the Golden Temple of Amritsar, drop a coin, take prasad, do the parikrama.
It's the age of the sweat-free, do-it-yourself kind of spirituality. Of anytime, anywhere blessing. No intermediaries. Just you, your God and your cellphone. Consumer religion, social scientists would declare.
Consider how a bit of technology can make your soul searching experience, making contact with that omnipresent eye, making your own peace, and making sense of the world, into a virtual exercise! A kind of do-it, forget-it and move-on religion that has us believing that we can download God, find solace in a bhajan ringtone, and SMS Him to others of our kind.
* * *
Double tones
It's perhaps the reflection of the new India. We can't let go of our roots, our tradition, our gods. And we cling to our filmi item numbers, and wallpapers of perilously under-clad nubile women under a waterfall or on a beach. Notice how they all co-exist on any mobile service provider's website. So while the "Oye Bubbly" ringtone is one of the most popular downloads, so is the "Suprabhatam".
Here's some of the most popular devotional content on the web:
* Ringtones that also double as car-reversal warning systems: Gayatri Mantra, Venkatesha Suprabhatam, Om Jai Jagadish Hare, Gajamukhane, Jai Ganesh Jai Ganesh, Itni Shakti Hame Dena Daata, and a whole lot of region-specific aarti songs, and mantras/slokas.
* Wallpapers that are as real and colourful as they used to be on calendars: the symbol of Om, Shiva, Vishnu, Nataraja, Guru Nanak, Ganesha, Durga Ma, Hanumanji, Jesus Christ, Dhanalakshmi, Tirupati Balaji, Krishna (in various avatars and ages starting with the young Balakrishna).
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