Donation - Who needs your money. A must read? It was a Thursday on the first day of this year. I knew how it feels for a Sai devotee. New Year always brings lots of new hopes and since the first day was a Thursday, I was very excited and happy and felt that this is definitely going to be a good year. In the evening I went to Sai temple, did pooja and offered some money in the hundi of the temple.
The next day, I heard about an old friend whose father died 5 years back. I haven't heard about her since then. I didn't know that she had to abandon her study due to the financial crisis. She joined a beauty parlor to support her family. She has a younger sister who was physically challenged. I was shocked to learn about her story. She was a very bright and ambitious student and she had lots of dreams about her higher education. I really felt bad. I tried to help her and offered her financial help so she can resume her study. But it was too late. She couldn't accept my offer as she had discontinued her studies long back as she had to support her family. Later in the day I remembered an article about Shirdi Sai Sansthan becoming the second richest temple in the country just behind the temple of Tirupati. There were talks of enormous amounts of money collected by the temple as donation or offerings by people. I wondered how much of that money is actually utilized and how much of that money remains idle not serving any purpose. People donate hundreds of crores of rupees every year to various temples and spiritual organizations without even caring how much of that money would be utilized. This incident made me realize that there are definitely better and even more practical ways of utilizing the money which we want to donate. And this can be achieved if we look around the place we live and identify the needs of the people. Because India is a land of contrasts, we can always find people who are in greater need of goods and financial assistance than us. For example we can support the education of a kid of a poor family, pay for the medical bills of the person who cannot afford it, feed poor people or donate our money to an organization which is actively involved in social work and not just sit on piles of money. Most of the famous Temples are already very rich and practically they do not need any money at least for a couple of years. There is no better sight in the world than seeing the face of a small child who cannot afford education and who has just been given a notebook and other accessories by you. If you think you have very little money to help, you can save that little money and add onto it till it becomes significant enough to bring a change in a needy person's life. You can even save a fixed amount of money per month and use it later when you see someone really needs it. If you look around carefully, you will find lots of opportunity where the money can be utilized. Donation is not a formality to please our lords but it's a way to support and appreciate a noble cause. The responsibility lies on us to plan well and donate the money very carefully as it belongs to our Sai. We give full attention to our SAI who is sitting inside a temple but we often ignore SAI who lives in each and every human soul in this world. Let us make judicious use of our assets to spread happiness in the lives of people who need it most. PS: Article published in Samarpan Jan 2009 Edition.
