Religiously Yours

Often I see things religiously. If not by practice, I often visit pilgrimages of India. So once, I visited Varanasi, the capital of our Lord, with my friend. This friend of mine is a zealous religious one. After submitting our prayers to the Lord Vishwanath, we took a circular round of the Temple. There we saw a cart pulled by a bullock arrive at the back door of the temple, carrying a huge load of logs. Looking at the exhausted creature, my generous friend shrieked, "Ridiculous, this is a criminal act. How can you inflict pain on an innocent animal like that?" I pacified him by saying," don't worry, this bull, after his death, would be reborn as a man, as per our religious dictum, as it has served our Lord in good earnest." My friend quipped, "another life of struggle and torture!" I replied to him, "this time he would become an army man." Now when I see a government official, I take him as a reincarnation of a donkey working in the one of the various temples of Haridwar, in its previous birth.

I believe that the politicians are the reincarnation of cats in temples. Unlike dogs, as a pet, they are not faithful, they change loyalty sooner they find well-off masters. Although, the cats are loveable pets, but horrifyingly they amuse when their masters die. These characteristics of cats have tremendous similarities with our politicians. Once I saw a pet cat being adored by the head seer of Jagannath Dham Temple at Puri. The young cat was sitting on the lap of the seer, while he was giving soft touch to the pet. This pet was obviously a special one, I felt it, God's own. I watched the cat from a close view, as I knew this one would be an incarnation of a future Prime Minister of India.