It’s Maha Shivratri in India today. The festival is observed not only in India but also in different countries of the world by the devotees of Lord Shiva, the God of Gods according to Indian mythology. The day is also observed remembering Shravan Kumar, a great son who took his parents in a kanwar (a duet sort of a weighbridge) on his shoulders to pilgrimage to fulfil their desire as such as they were too old and weak to walk the distance. It was too tortuous a task for him to carry them like this from one pilgrimage centre to another but he did make it as faithfully committed a son. These devotees of Lord Shiva symbolically repeat the exercise by using ornamentally decorated palkies known as kanwars and those who do so are known as kanwarias travelling long distances from place to place. Like every culture has some ill or the other associated to it, this practice has it in abundance and the kanwarias are seen more as a nuisance than the faithful devotees. They disrupt the traffic at times resorting to manhandling with the other passersby. Several of them are virtually scoundrels behaving as goons. They behave nasty at the first available opportunity. Most of them are not really faithful to their parents, they instead take the ritual as picnic and a pleasure trip. Reports are that they even ill treat their parents at home as against telling the whole world as if they are most faithful and obedient to them in all respects. How very nice it would have been if they treated their parents really faithfully as their son(s) instead of ill treating them. Maha Shivratri, let us wish, bestows upon them the bliss of love in the real sense instead of playing a mockery of it.**
** This post is dedicated to Shri DN Sharma, a close relation of mine, who inspired me to write it. This one is the first dedication on this blog.
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