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RELIGION:
ONLINE WORSHIP
God's
Only A Click Away
For those
who have no time to visit God in his tabernacle, the Good Lord goes to
them. Welcome to the world of cyber shrines and virtual worship
By
Natasha Israni
Jaya
Gopalakrishnan, a deeply religious NRI, is having a busy weekend at her
San Francisco home. She has planned a puja at her favourite temple in
India and she has loads to do. But how is she going to cross so many time
zones to reach the Chennai temple the very same day? Well, she might not
have Harry Potter's magic wand, but ever since this engineer discovered
saranam.com, an Indian heritage and culture portal, whenever she
can't make it to the pujas they come to her-literally.
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How? Portals
like saranam.com, eprarthana.com and prarthana.com make
this possible by taking orders for pujas. And often, each time a puja
is being performed in India, those who place such orders perform one at
home too. Prasad is later sent to the customers-wherever they may be.
Says Gopalakrishnan, now a regular Net-enabled worshipper: "I get
great satisfaction when I receive prasad from the temple where a prayer
has been specially performed for my family." While Saranam aims to
give prayer enthusiasts a choice of around 2,000 temples to order a puja
from, Eprarthana already claims to offer the service in 1,250 Indian temples.
It isn't
just e-pujas. From answers to questions on religion to online aartis,
from personalised puja rooms to a shopping mall where you can pick up
idols, joss sticks and pilgrimage tours, there are dotcoms galore devoted
to religion and other ethereal concepts. And guess who's lapping it all
up-the New Age angst-ridden Indian, especially the time and distance-constrained
NRI. Separated from lofty gopurams and church altars, it's the
small screens of PCs and laptops that have become their path pointers
to Nirvana. Welcome to virtual worship where God is just a mouse click
away.
The spiritual
flood on the Net seems to have started in the mid-1990s with temple websites
created by zealous NRIs. By 1998, around 50 US temples had their own sites.
Then the virtual trend, but naturally, hit the original temple land. Siddhivinayak
temple in Mumbai, was probably the first to go online in 1998. Its site-siddhivinayak.org-has
logged one crore hits, and during Ganesh festival has up to 60,000 visitors
a day.
The site
offers 55 religious audios for downloading. The most popular features
remain Shree Siddhivinayak screensavers, wallpapers and the popular Janmakshar
service that suggests names for new borns. Future plans include a virtual
store for idols and religious material. Ashok Nadkarni of Webstudio, who
first designed this site, points out that the modern generation's hurried
lifestyle is responsible for the site's success.
Karthik Janakiraman, co-founder and CEO, saranam.com (which takes about
30 puja orders a week), agrees: "People do not have time to visit
a temple that's a two-hour drive away." That's not the only reason
driving them to cyber shrines. Old age and physical handicaps are factors
too. Students studying abroad and wanting much needed blessings for exams
log on as well.
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