Mantras & Rituals in English

The most hilarious moment every time we have an abhiskheka at home is when the priest asks my Dad to repeat some mantras after him. The priest doesn’t give a damn about whether it is pronounced properly or not. So long as some voice is heard that is even slightly close to what he said, it is accepted & the process continues.

Frankly how many of us really know what the priest is reciting? Yes, it may be from the religious texts, the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads & so on but what they mean is very difficult to comprehend.

The other day, I was at my uncle’s house warming ceremony, where a Satyanaraya Pooja was organized. And like in any Satyanarayana Pooja, there was the satyanarayana katha (story) read out. Most times this is in Kannada. But for some strange reason the elders present there decided to ask someone to do the honor of reading the story & he chose to do it in Marathi. I was entrusted the responsibility of keeping the camphor burning all through the stories. The fact that keeping the camphor burning was a really difficult task is a different topic for another day, but in the process I realized that not a single soul there understood the story being read out, partly because it was just READ out & partly because it was in a language that no body found easy to understand. Although all of us speak Marathi, the difference between spoken Marathi & written is like sky & earth. At least to me that is how it is.

That got me thinking about why shouldn’t the katha be in English. Would that be wrong? Would the culture police raise an objection to that? Well, what the culture police raises an objection to & to what they don’t is very difficult to say. But for some reason I feel, if the story was read out in English it would have been wonderful. All would have understood the story & the whole process would have made that much more sense. I would have loved to do the reading myself if that was in English.

I feel what today’s youth craves is reasoning & some excitement. Anything that is slightly on the boring side is abhorred. Remember how popular A R Rahman’s version of Vande Mataram became with the youth. That is what I’am talking about. I feel we need to do things that the youth can understand in their language.

So the Satyanaraya Katha should be read out in English, or if purists have a problem, may be it could be read out simultaneously with whatever other language it should be read out in. Also, every time a mantra is read out, wouldn’t it be great if the priest or whoever is reciting it, explains the meaning in English. Again, the whole process would make that much more sense. May be, the whole process of whatever happens in a pooja, right from the burning of the camphor, or agarbathi or breaking the coconut should be explained as it is happening, preferably in a language that most people would understand & if that is English so be it. Pushing it even more, how about the mantras in English itself? May be on second thoughts it’s far fetched right now. How about before starting the celebrations of a festival, if we could have a session on the why’s & the hows. Yeah may be we know the funda behind a Diwali but how many of us can say the same about Varmahalakshmi Pooja or Ugadi & so on.


Yeah there is the Internet from where I can get whatever info I want. But how many of us you think would give a search related to Rituals, Mantras, Poojas & so on.

If we can take some of these & other related measures & get the youth hooked, we can rest assured that our centuries old traditions will live on for another century & more.