Gifts from the gods

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Those who love God and his angels, the gods and goddesses and engage in their service whenever opportunity permits, do not miss out on anything of their own needs. Like a loving parent, God does not give us all we want but He gives us what we need. These are provided with ease by Him and the gods. From time to time, there are special gifts from them, by the love and grace of the Lord.

Every year, during one of the months of monsoons called Savan, village fairs calls melas in local language are held near Siva temples across several towns of northern India. I had described a visit to one in an earlier post. I rarely visit the temple itself on such Mondays because there is long line outside the temple. My own belief is that if you carry the love of the Lord in your heart, one does not have to visit a temple for it. God is everywhere. I just convey my greetings to the Lord from a distance, from a place where just the roof of the temple is visible because of the trees.

Going through the various stalls in the fair is fun. There are stalls with street foods that I avoid, my own diet being a highly controlled one now.  I loved street foods when younger but they would play havoc with my stomach now. Stalls’ selling various nick-knack and things one needs around the home are focus of my attention. Often, one finds things useful for the home at rock bottom prices. I find here gifts for my grand children and gifts for people who work for me off and on in the garden or around the home and things for myself too. When I find something especially useful at a negligible price, it is indeed a gift from the gods. This year I picked up a couple of shirts that were beautiful, one a half sleeved pink one and another blue dress shirt, both with elegant embroided pin stripes in white. During my professional years, I mostly wore white shirts. I still have a huge collection of white shirts but few colored ones. Therefore, these colored shirts were much needed.

When I came home and tried the shirts, they were perfect fits. They are indeed loving gifts from the Lord, the blue one from Lord Shiva since it is his favorite color and the pink one from his consort the mother goddess, it being one of her favorite colors.  The blue one has been repacked for use on a special occasion, but I wear the pink one on Fridays.  A picture of both placed on my bed was just snapped to go with the post.

Praise the Lord, praise Lord Shiva, and praise the mother goddess

Recent photo from the author's garden

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