Buttering Up Saturn

This man used to present himself religiously at our doorstep every Saturday when I was a kid.. Looking at him in his white dhoti, turban and handlebar moustache , one got the impression that he was one of those bandits you saw in Bollywood’s Chambal Valley ‘easterns’, the kind of guy who leered at dancing girls and abducted the heroine on horseback. But he was in fact, a beggar though his hefty profile fitted the bandit’s image like a T and not a beggar’s. .

My mother used to make me drop a coin, 25 paisa or 50 paisa into a pail he carried. If I did that, she told me, Shani, aka Saturn would be pleased with me and would not trouble me much during his seven and half year long evil spell in whose grip I was caught then.

I now wonder at Shani’s penchant for fractions. Couldn’t Lord Shanidev round it up to seven or eight years instead of this seven and half? But I did not ask my mother then as she took this half bit very seriously and would brook no irreverence from me.

The guy was hardly seen during the rest of the week . I wondered what he did then. Did he make enough money on that single day to live well for the rest of the week? His starched dhoti, lily white turban and waxed moustache gave the indication that he wasn’t badly off. May be he was really a well-earning Chambal Valley bandit who moonlighted as a beggar on Saturday.

These Saturday mendicants seem to have gone into extinction nowadays. But the business of coaxing Shani to turn his malevolent eye away from us humble homo sapiens has grown from a cottage industry into a big business.. On Saturday you can see on every street corner in Delhi a plate on which a grotesque image has been propped up. The image is supposed to be that of Shani and he seems to be saying “Pay up or else…..” And a lot of people seem to be coughing up money swayed by this divine protection racket as these plates are overflowing with cash by evening. Some innovative entrepreneur must have become a millionaire with all that moolah by now.

But recently I found that the business of buttering up Shani is a lot bigger than Saturday mendicants and protection racketeers. Surfing TV channels one day, I chanced upon a teleshopping programme in which a guy was peddling what he called Shani Vimochana Yantra , which looked like some kind of medallion with the image of a portly guy seated on a crow..(That must be soeme heavyweight lifter crow!). The yantra the salesman said cost around Rs 2,000 plus with some freebies thrown in and was actually an armour on which Shani’s malevolence would bounce off.

Now, that programme was really enlightening. Until I saw it, I had naively believed that tsunamis were caused by movement of tectonic plates that triggered quakes and massive waves in the sea. But no, said our SVY (acronym for our Yantra} salesman . Movement of some plates tectonic or dinner plates did not cause the upheaval. It was caused by Saturn’s evil eye.

Boy, that was an eye opener! But it raised a serious question. I can understand if an individual wears the SVY he would be protected from Saturn but how do you protect the entire coastline of the country from Shani-triggered tsunamis? Do we have to bury SVYs all along the coast?

This could be Open Sesame for our netas and babus. Besides conveniently blaming all disasters and the government’s inability to provide relief to affected people on Shani , they could make a pretty pocket ordering SVYs to protect the coastline. Soon the country would be rife with reports of ministers and bureaucrats getting kickbacks for ordering SVYs. Opposition parties would demand an inquiry into the scam and paralyze parliament proceedings as newspaper headlines would scream “SHANIGATE!!!!!!!!!”.

Soon if Saturn gave a nasty look to the government it would collapse and if Lord Shani gave another malevolent glance at the country another pack of jokers would form the next government as everyone would eagerly await fresh scams.

And what would the common man do. Blame his miserable lot on Saturn, of course.

PS: I have been trying to post this thread for over a week and failed miserably due to some technical glitch or other. Could it be that Lord Shanidev is behind the failure?

 

UMA, sHANI SEEMS TO BE REAL BIG BUSINESS. dON'T BE SURPRISED IF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS ENTER THE BUSINESS OF SELLING ANTI-SHANI CHARMS.. tHE BUSINESS IS THAT LUCRATIVE.