The Connect: Bond with something bigger than self.
By: Yuvraj Dhepe
Tags: Connection, Bonds, Mythology, Connect, God

#S10

Hey it looks, very similar to the original deity sculpture I looked into the temple. Anyways it’s a replica of deity but seems very identical, the artist who has made this sculpture might had put his whole mind and heart into developing this I believe.

Well this queue is moving very slowly and still we are here, well people are throwing coins around the sculpture and near to the legs of the deity there 2 coins were lying. I think the 2 people might have been quite lucky cause their coin made it very near to the deity’s sculpture.

Oh wait what is all this above, just give me a moment to explain

This is an incident or a bliss of connect, the story for today.

So let me take you at the start of how this all began or what I am doing near to a deity sculpture all together.

From a very young age like most of the young children, I was fascinated by the superpowers of the superheroes. More than the physical attributes of them, I was also fascinated by the leadership qualities these souls possessed, back when I was young I wanted some of the physical ones, n my favorite was the ability of flying and still it is. Maybe one day I might be able to fly.

Since I loved the superheroes I had different toys to play with, different cartoon shows of the superheroes to watch and learn from. Similar to my toys, it seemed my father also had toys , just the difference is that they were placed in the temple, or their own small house in our big home. I was taught that these are our gods and I used to offer prayer to them on weekends, while dad did the same but more frequently. To my young mind, giving bath to these small artifacts, which dad used to call god, didn’t seem weird. Maybe I am very liberal in that sense though cause back then I had no problem with anyone doing anything as long as it didn’t interfere with my daily routine and stuff.

Coming back to my dad, he used to tell me stories about Gods, their qualities and to me it seemed that these are nothing but Dad’s superheroes kinda old school but still fine. I have my own new school hero’s and so Dad can have his own. Apart from this I have a kind of nature to trust my parents, so I trusted my dad, his beliefs and since it was again backed by my own grandparents I had to be on with it, because back then every small story my grandparents shared had shaped my character in some way so this was also gonna do the same. Back then I didn’t knew this but still trusted the concept of God.

With time I have come to realize that in life one needs some sense of connection in life to something bigger than oneself. This really helps to make sense of things which go beyond common understanding humans have, mainly because of cognitive limitations, we are not able to put every thing into perspective and shouldn’t try to as well.

So considering something as god or superheroes for connection is a concept to have faith in something lets say big magic and I think to humans this helps to keep life in flow when adversaries strike. For me I believe in God, Mother Nature and recently I am getting familiar with Miss Universe as my new connection. So today’s story is about how I established connection with God, with whom I had a couple of interactions in weird forms until this one day when it all felt real.

Just one disclaimer: It’s not necessary to find connection with God, or to mother nature or miss universe it may be anything, may be a soul in your life, may be an object.. Anything which kinda defies time and is there always to explain any bits and bytes and you are able to relate to this one thing at almost every moment in life. Don’t rush it cause the connection will automatically come in time.

So coming back to the story or the sculpture part, in my 8th grade our family decided to have a family trip to various devotional places in Maharashtra, a state in India.

I was kinda excited and to keep it short let me just give you a brief about the trip. Me, my parents, and my other family members, traveled near about 4 to 5 devotional places and the place which I was standing in the story is from the ending destination. Its called Pandharpur (Let’s take it P for instance and easy understanding.)

P is a place in India which is believed to have produced phenomenal saints in India, I mean the literature written by them even describes the existence of protons and neutrons.. Well I don’t think they gave any proof back then but surely they imagined these particles to exist, this is actually written in the architectures, a fact surprising here is all this was done without the help of any world class technologies which we possess now.

This teaches one thing about humanity i.e. humanity has a great potential to achieve anything, if efforts are applied in the right direction. P is a place where people worship one form of Lord Vishnu, one of the 3 major deities of Indian Mythology. The deity is called as Lord Vitthal in there.

Here He is, You can have a glance at the beauty yourself.

Lord Vitthal Pic at Home.

Well to describe in My own language I don’t think the words will suffice cause the beauty expressed by saints is another big thing to describe for a short story. So in English you may describe Lord Vitthal as a dark boy, standing akimbo. It is said that deity is waiting from 28 centuries for a devotee, who spent his whole lifetime serving his own parents and taking care of them. For the time being that will suffice the description of the Lord, you can check out the further history on google or in historic literature.

So after we had a proper visit to the temple and seeing the Lord Vitthal, offering prayers, taking his blessing and doing a see off, we visited a place where there were different historic artifacts depicting the culture of this town P and how life has evolved there. This Place was called a Matth (For simplicity let’s call it M). In this Place M I was standing in a long queue while glancing at different artifacts.

This is the place I was in at the beginning of the story, here I was describing this deity and how beautifully the artist had made a replica of Lord Vitthal that it looked so original and I kinda don’t have any right to call it a replica cause the devotion put into work is kinda enough to make it original.

Now in the line seeing all different types of people throwing coins at the sculpture, my dad and my younger brother were gonna do the same. But before that let me tell you why were they throwing coins at a cultural place..

Well the place M was not a private institution and to maintain it, they had to generate money. For the same people used to donate, but that didn’t seem to fulfill the needs to maintain the beauty of the place. So the organization came up with the plan that the people may be able to offer coins, also coins are considered as a form of god, and the logic behind that is people consider that by offering coins they make a wish and it comes true. I know to a very logical person this may seem weird but again we need to accept humanity with its own qualities right. But anyways the pt is this organization offered coins in exchange of currency notes to the devotees who visited there to see the sculptures, and made a wish. By making a wish and re-throwing the coins back at the sculpture.. All the money was spent from the pockets of visitors, and the organization collected those coins after a few months or so. In this way the organization made money without any donations from others. Kinda a good strategic plan I believe to make money in self-sustained beautiful places.

Likewise other people my dad was gonna throw a coin and similarly my brother, but I had finished all of my stock of coins, so I borrowed one from my mother.

Now pay attention folks this is the real part of the story, here my dad told, see son there are only 2 coins at the feet of lord, once your coin makes it to that place then you are a good _______.

Blank because, I don’t remember exactly what he said, maybe a good being, a good superhero, a good soul. Whatever it may be, you may fill the blank what you like. For me I will choose to be a good being. N From a small age I had a challenge accepting brain, so I accepted the challenge of my father to throw a coin right at the feet of the deity, but somewhere my guts told me to do this challenge with true heart to win this. So here I was with my closed eyes, oh wait before that let me tell you ki Papa n my small brother missed the target. Now coming to my turn, I closed my eyes and took the name of Lord Vitthal and said Jay Shree Pandurangaye Namaha, Kinda a small call to Lord Vitthal, and threw the coin.

Now I opened my eyes and you guess what ?

I made it.

Till then My coin was there. I didn’t see the trajectory of the coin, but my dad describes it something like this:

It first fell near the feet and then took 2 hops and went in front of the previous 2 coins and took the first place in the lord’s feet. Good Job Son you are a good being it seems. As soon as I saw this, butterflies seemed to go through my stomach and I was very happy and feeling blessed with this act.

I don’t have real words to describe, but from that day to this day, I have kept the connection with the lord, and this connection has taken me from almost all ups and downs of life till now.

To end let me sum up with a Moral:

Moral: In life everyone needs some connection in life, to something bigger than one’s own self and it may be anything. If you have found it out great, if not then don’t worry you will find one.

If you have your story about Connect, I would love to hear about one of them. Also you may let me know, any way you could relate to my own story of connection.

I hope you liked it. Below is the link to the previous story.

#S9 Patience: Enjoying the Current Moment with Curiosity.