When looking up ancient history pages, one sees abundant pictures of ‘rainy day car festivals’ only. Countless umbrellas having flung open together create the impression of a huge canopy in front of the cars of the deities. All this was because the Car Festival used to be a typical monsoon festival. In days of yore, monsoon arrived quite on its appointed time at the close of the first week of June or beginning of the second. It never faltered on its timeliness.
But as time rolled by, humans began looking for more objects of luxury and merrymaking, commercial production of outwardly comfort-giving but truly destructive devices and gadgets intensified beyond control. And today, we have horrific things like single-use plastics and numerous such other things without which life was once so much the more comfortable. But nature would never take any beating lying low. In time, humans turned illogically consumeristic and indiscriminately produced luxury things that consumed huge amounts of fossil fuel including coal and petroleum products that added heat to atmosphere. Even to produce electricity that makes manufacture of anything possible, extreme heat producing fuels like coal and petroleum are used.
Today, even lowest middleclass families have at least one air-conditioner at home like they have a two-wheeler automobile. These machines give out only heat and toxic fumes. The air-conditioners cool the small interior and blast out the hot air to the atmosphere thereby turning the outside an active oven. The summer atmosphere in tropical and subtropical countries like India is heated up beyond control. The coastal regions become more terrible because of humidity which kills more than the plain heat as that seals off sweat pores on the body.
So, the Car Festival now is no more a monsoon event. It falls in the peak of humid summer. Every second human creature in India is a great devotee of Lords. And because of modern communication devices which are madly cheap, everyone knows everything. The scientists at top laboratories and the rail station porter have equal access to interesting information. In addition to all this, popular governments have made available institutional loans on very easy terms. Everyone can own at least a two-wheeler to shoot out anywhere. India, the most populous country on the planet, is excessively filled with heat-blasting machines all around without planting trees or taking corrective measure to keep the surrounding cool. Consequently, weathers have become unruly and they appear and disappear at will. Winters are warm and summers provide furnace atmospheres only.
This article is not to blame any human or beast. It is a well-known phenomenon that luxury-ensuring development and the matching evolution happen at their pace, but the price tag hanging at the objects cannot be ignored. Hence, the punishment is meted out to humans by Mother Nature.
Coming back to the world-famous Car Festival at Puri, it has to be admitted that the event is one of the most painful as the summer heat around this time has become routinely hot and humid. Yet, the regional governments keep luring people from all over to throng Puri and suffocate one another. The little temple town on sea is projected as a coveted destination by publicising great arrangements for devotees, pilgrims and tourists. Sadly, the local administration fails to recognise the critical fact that everyone would be in trouble, more so because the local residents eventually are forced to be prisoners at home. The traffic discipline goes haywire as blocking roads in mad manners does not make movement smooth.
Incidentally, two festivals in India are declared national events in which Central security forces are deployed. One is the Kumbh Mela and the other is Puri Rath Yatra, the latter having been known since ages for its gloss, glitter and colour while the much-awaited monsoon would set in. This has stopped happening since long. Even the local hosts including the servitors and the age-old monastery authorities, once known for their monumental hospitality, have all turned greedy or callous.
People hardly know that Lord Jagannath was popularised among the Western world singly by the great preacher Prabhupada, who founded the ISKCON and propounded the true spirit of ‘Sanatana', the universal religion that embraced people of all faiths alike. ‘Sanatana' erroneously called ‘Hindu' means all beings are the creation of God and there is just no difference between humans on the organic or spiritual front irrespective of the faith they have espoused. All other faiths have some written expression of disapproval of other religions in their scriptures or practice, but ‘Sanatana' treats all as equal. This very message, once hammered into the heads of the people living in the Western world, did change their views on the Hindu religion and slowly and steadily a sizeable population across the Christian and even Muslim communities in the erstwhile Soviet region converted to Hinduism of their own accord. ‘Sanatana' is the only religion spreading across the world rapidly without guileful missionary activity by any fanatic.
Lord Jagannath is eminently famous for being the Lord of the Universe. Yet, somehow, some Hindu priests or monarchs have made His temple a forbidden shrine for non-Hindus. Believably, Adi Shankaracharya, to save Sanatana dharma from the aggressive missionary Buddhists preaching their faith as a reformed form of Hinduism, framed some acts of Brahminism mainly to thwart Buddhism and remain safe. The other theory is that the priestly class at the temple made strict rules of no entry for the non-Hindus after powerful Muslim invaders looted the temple treasure trove several times.
Whatever be the theory or fact, most famous Hindu temples of India are open to all humanity irrespective of the faith one follows. Tirupati Balaji, Ayappa and the wealthiest Padmanabha Swami temple have no bar on entry of any human being. So, the Lord of the Universe not permitting devotees to enter the temple premises indicates God discriminates between humans, which can never be the case.
For all this maybe, the monsoon festival is now kind of an extreme punishment to most people. Though the rich and the powerful can spend much to come in luxury cars, sit at luxury platforms and show off gleaming faces to cause frenzy among the helpless millions, the Lord is only irked at them and planning more severe punishment. The government authorities must fight till finish to change silly antihuman rules and facilitate entry of all humans into the abode of the Lord of the Universe.
A mere ‘Jai Jagannath' sloganeering without being just to all is only sinning. That’s perhaps why the Lord has converted the joyous monsoon festival to a lethally hot affair to make hateful people suffer extreme heat coupled with suffocating humidity!