"Holy Exposure" joke
THE age-old controversy about religion that continues to rage throughout the nation reminded me about a Malayalam story. It goes something like this:
An old man whose son was working in the Gulf sent him a parcel of colourful shirt pieces. In the habit of wearing a konakam, a kind of underwear usually worn by oldies, the old man took the shirt piece, cut it up into konakams and started wearing them. Desirous of showing off his new-found affluence, the old man acquired the strange habit of picking up a corner of his dhoti to display his colourful underwear. When acquaintances asked him about his new konakams, the old man was only too glad to say that his son had sent them all the way from across the seas. One day, the old man, in a hurry to get some errand through, rushed out of home forgetting to wear his Vilayati underwear. On the street, the old gent started on his favourite trick: picking up the corner of his dhoti. The passersby seeing the sight could not help laughing. But the old man thought the smiles and the laughs were all in appreciation of his Vilayati konakam. This is nothing, I have 14 more,' he told those who cared to listen amid the hidden smiles.
The same it is with religion. It is like an underwear: an important personal thing. Its display makes it vulgar and ridiculous. Religion has often been brought down from the sublime to the ridiculous. Religion then is to the soul what an underwear is to the body. And to all those who make a show of displaying their brand of religion on their sleeve, I can only say what I would have liked to tell the old man,' Sir, take care, your bottom can be seen.'
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