A slight shower after scorching heat would make anyone feel like sip a cuppa coffee and so me and my friend ended up in a hotel where a man in his fifties walked to us barefoot and handed over a leaflet (yes,the same old bit notice) . At the first sight i thought it was some ad for a local clinic which cures aids by just popping three pills , just crushed it into a paper ball and put it in my pocket without even glancing.. as my friend was busy messaging his gal friend(s) and the waiter was not in mood to take cheap orders like coffee so was left with no choice but to read through the leaflet. It seemed to have a logo of some temple and since it was printed in a font which stood in between unreadable and readable had a tough time reading it. It started like this …Bakthargale , (devotees) and it seemed to go on like a story thenceforth..
The story goes like this.. There was a priest in a village 200 years ago and while coming out of the temple after his chores , was bitten / entrapped by a snake and then god came from the snake that was hurting him . WOW, God then explained the priest how unsatisfied he/she is with the people because no one turns up to temple/don offer feast to the poor….and then the god gave a solution to this and asks the fellow priest to print ( Did they really printed on paper 200 years ago ?? ) 1000 copies of leaflet with this story on it..It doesn’t end here.. Those who read this notice ( purposefully /accidentally ) must print another thousand copies and your wishes in life would come true , along with it was mentioned that those who fail to do so will be sabotaged.
Footnotes :
- A man named saravanan died cos he read one such thing and did not redistribute it.
- Someone who couldn’t print it lost 5 lakhs in business and later he distributed them to get 15 lakhs in return.
The last 2 lines consisted of names of the family members who are involved in ‘This Service’ to the society and the name of the Offset printers (with a huge logo).
Thank god the coffee came right on time to save my friend from getting abused. I just have a doubt here. Why can’t people make up better stories?? And all i wonder is this. Is this a sales pitch that the Offset printers have initiated ??? or is it the loss of the temple business that kindled the whole theory for making the temple popular ?? what ever it is i wanted to appreciate the people involved in such a novel way of advertising a temple ( and the printers, of course) . If people wanted to do service to the community they can do some math to arrive at a fact that it will cost 50 paise per print and a thousand would cost 500 bucks which could be spent on something useful , say feed a poor for over a month ( or at least wish that guy buys himself a new pair of sandals ) . Why does all of us have to believe in shortcuts ?
N.B: Don’t ask me for the leaflet i tore it in bits n threw it away…