Qarz kee peetey thhey mai;

Par samajhey thhey haan;

Rang laayegee meree faqa mastee ek din

The real mango season begins when western UP mangoes come into the market

(On borrowed money I got my drinks, but I thought my penury will bring me glory one day. I am not penurious but reluctant to buy my liquor from the bazaar).

Like other free loaders, I find the OP (other people’s) brand of whisky much tastier. I have a few friends who make it a point to come with a bottle whenever invited. When my stock runs low, all I have to do is to ask them to drop in for a drink. They replenish my dwindling stock. I am sure my hero, Ghalib, was also an ustad of the art of touching his patrons and admirers, and made them express their admiration for him with a bottle or two of good whisky.

Outsourcing prayers

Many years ago I happened to be in Nanded (Maharashtra) and went to Hazur Sahib gurdwara to pay homage to the last Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, who was assassinated there in 1708. It is one of the most sacred of gurdwaras and a place of pilgrimage. I came across something which baffled me. There was a row of cabins separated by thin walls of plywood in which a dozen akhand paths (non-stop reading of the Granth Sahib by a relay of paathees) were being performed with no one listening to them.

I sought explanation from the head granthi. He told me people from India and abroad sent money for akhand paths to be followed by Guru-ka-langar as thanksgiving or wish fulfilment. I could not comprehend how prayers recited by someone else could benefit a devotee who paid for them. However, I found such practices more prevalent in other communities as well. Hindus have havans performed at distant places. Muslims pay expenses to people going for Haj, hoping that benefits will accrue to them.

Even Mirza Ghalib pleaded with Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar to take him along on Haj and he would give his tswaab (benefit) to his majesty. However, the British did not allow the Mughal king to leave Delhi.

What came as a big surprise to me was to find that Europeans, Canadians and Indian Christians are also into outsourcing prayers. Well-to-do English, Canadians and Americans, who can’t be bothered to go to church, paid for holy masses in euros or dollars, outsourcing religious rituals to Kerala Christian priests.

I read about it in the latest Private Eye of May 15. To wit: "The outsourcing of American and European jobs to low-wage countries like India has been happening for years", Archbishop Jacob Thoomkuzhy told reporters in Kerala, "and religious outsourcing is no different. Because of shortage of priests in the industrialised world, prayers for the dead and holy masses are being paid for by the westerners, then offshored to India".

"It is a lucrative business for churches in Kerala. Mass intentions that are paid for in dollars or euros are carried out here by local priests. The prayers are recited, and the fees paid by westerners help cash-starved parishes here. So what’s the problem? " asked the archbishop.

For example, when British newspapers whipped up a storm about David Beckham’s affairs, a Beckham fan from London paid `A350 for a mass to save the soul of his hero. The holy mass, however, was not held in a London parish.

It was outsourced by the church authorities to a bishop in India, who passed it to a remote church at Anthikad in Thrissur diocese, where the mass took place. "We do not want to look at this commercially, but it is a huge boost to the local religious economy here,’’ said the archbishop.