Rajasthan 3 - Pushkar Mela, Morning Prayers

There is more to Pushkar than meets the eye (or tongue!). Pushkar is not just about the annually held Pushkar mela, with its parading camels and evening cultural programs. Neither is it about the few kilometers long display of colour made into clothes, bags and handicrafts.
It is, in fact, not about that at all.

Pushkar, in its primal identity, is a holy land. It is the 'tirth raj' (ie: King of the pilgrimage sites) of the Hindus. Now, while I knew this from my mother, it is only when I set foot into the Brahma temple I realised how unaware I was about my own land and its people.

To my good fortune, the 'pujaris' and dedicated devotees did not let me remain in that state of ignorant bliss for long. I entered the temple and soon learnt that one must take a dip (or, in keeping with the time - wash hands) in the holy Pushkar Lake. This, of course is holy water blessed by Lord Brahma, who perhaps instructed the government to conserve it, which is why it resembles a ground with water leakage currently. I chose to ignore these inconsistencies and take a dip nonetheless. Only to be informed that is a holy procedure. Holy procedures need holy manners and therefore, holy men.
And holy men come with a plate of flowers which comes at anything between Rs.10 to Rs. 100 depending on your attire, accent, camera and nationality.
After purchasing my Rs. 10 worth of flowers, I could proceed to wash away my sins.

Wait a minute, while I am doing that (in sanskrit of course) I encounter, yet again, various aspects of my ignorance. I thought that I was performing an act of devotion. It turned out that devotion is not devotion unless accompanied by generosity. And generosity is that of the monetary kind. In religious sanskrit you call this 'daan'. And the amount of 'daan' depends only on your heart's desire and faith; which of course, is directly proportionate, to things of prime importance which regular souls cannot understand. The only consequential learning for us is that the value of 'daan', for religiously inexplicable reasons can never be a two-digit figure.

After having spent 45 minutes and 200 rupees, I saw the economics beyond the camel-trading at the fair and the bargaining at the markets; the true splendour of Pushkar!