Where is God? God is everywhere, and he dwells with everybody, God resides in our souls, and of course, we can see the face of the god on the smile of the poor ones! Yes. As per the sayings of the great scholar and the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Thiru Annadurai, we can find the face of the god on the smile of the poor ones! Many of us have this question in our mind that when so many poor young ones starve even without taking a cup of milk, then why there is a need to perform holy milk bath to the deities?
But it is entirely different! Doing service to the god is based on our own satisfaction, and no god compels us to perform holy bath to their idols. Only out of our own self-interest, we are doing such types of good tasks. God cannot look after the personal problems of the entire poor ones, and that’s why he has created some generous soft and good-hearted rich people, and he makes them to help those poor and destitute in the world.
Most of the upper middle class and rich people should come forward to help others, especially the poor, destitute and down-trodden people by the way of doing generous activities like providing food to the orphanages, old age homes, and to the road side destitute, since by doing that, definitely they would get more happiness and mental pleasure, than that of spending their time in costly hotels and in other sight-seeing places.
As per the sayings of Guru Raghavendra, “God has given you sufficient wealth due to your past birth good karmas. Try to utilize it properly, and contribute a portion of your wealth for charity purpose also, since at any time, anything may happen, hence before your death try to do good activities as much as possible”. Lord Krishna in his Bhagavat Gita also tells, “GIVE FOOD, GIVE FOOD, GIVE FOOD”, he asks us to donate food to the poor and the needy, and he insists us to do food donation by telling it for three times. It is also good to donate nice clothes to the road side beggars, and donating sari with blouse to a beggar woman, since doing this kind of act is considered similar to donating a costly sari to Ma Shakti Devi.
We can also spend some few hours in the old age homes and orphanages and can tell bhakti stories on Lord Rama and Lord Krishna, since stories related to Rama and Krishna would give great spiritual pleasure, and due to that, the people who lives in the old age homes, and orphanages would get happiness at least for some time in their life.
We can find great pleasure by offering something to others. During Deepavali and Pongal festivals, we can prepare large quantity of sugar free sweets and snacks and can distribute it to the old aged people. We would get great enjoyment by seeing the satisfied smiles on their face, which we could not get anywhere else. We can also visit temples and mutts, and can offer Food packets or biscuit packets to the beggars sitting nearby the temples/mutts.
During my stay at Chennai, I used to regularly offer biscuit packets to the beggars sitting nearby Sri Saibaba Temple, Mylapore. They used to smile, and happily take the biscuit packets, and right now, I used to give biscuits packets to the Apartment staffs like women sweepers, and they used to happily take it from my hands, by affectionately telling “ANNA THANK YOU”, and on seeing their cheerful faces, at the time of my offering, I used to consider their smile as the divine smile of goddess Ma Shakti Devi itself!
“JAI SRI KRISHNA”
–R. HARISHANKAR
