Email of the month: worshipping Pis in Kathmandu
I just received an email from Nepal. Sakar is a member of Karkhana, a Kathmandu makerspace, and their Raspberry Pis have just experienced a day quite unlike that of any other Raspberry Pis in the world. It’s important to remember before you read Sakar’s mail that the religious and cultural experience in Kathmandu can be extraordinarily involved, and is much more central to daily life than it is in, say, Cambridge. I’m not sure we in Cambridge get the best end of the deal here. Sakar says:
Hi Liz,
This might tickle your fancy.
I’m writing from Karkhana, a makerspace in Kathmandu. We are just about getting done with our biggest festival, Dasai, which celebrates the story of one of the two big Hindu epics, Ramayana. It’s a 10 day festival that pretty much brings the country to a complete halt as attention shifts to home, family, playing cards and chowing down on goat.
On the 9th day of festival is a special puja called the “Astra” puja, i.e a worship of implements. The army worships their guns and helicopters. The taxi drivers worship their engines. And we got a Brahmin priest to conduct the ceremony for our 3d printer, our tables saws, our soldering irons, and, of course, our Raspberry Pi’s.
Some photos are attached. Enjoy!
19 comments
AndyPi
Well the Raspberry Pi is probably the best computer in the world but I wouldn’t worship it…
I’m glad my God is a real person who I can speak to rather than an inanimate object :-)
AndrewS
Bill Gates? :-D
AndrewS
RaspberryPi – refreshes the parts other computers cannot reach!
dan3008
Amen
scala
Odin bless
Ben
Amen!
mo
Allahu akbar!
The Raspberry Pi Guy
Wow! What an amazing culture! I couldn’t imagine worshipping any other computer ;-)
Matt
The Raspberry Pi Guy
Rajasekhar
yes, its like respecting the tools/weapons that gave one bread or save one from enemy
Krishna
It is not worshiping Raspberry Pi, it is respecting and treating every object which a person depend on in his daily life. It is more logical to treat and respect the inanimate objects you daily depend on than praying to a imaginary gods or dead people. And yes Bill Gates is real God for majority of developing countries.
Fester Bestertester
Yes, I suspect us Westerners have lost sight of the origins of the word “worship”. It comes from “worth”, and suffix “-ship”. i.e. acknowledgement of worthiness (value).
OM
AH
HUM
Rio
Whether worshipping animate or imaginary gods/objects, the net effect is the same. You induce self-hypnosis and feel much better about your worship thanks to the placebo effect.
Yay science!
Marc
This is amazing.
Jim Manley
You had me at “chowing down”, but then I saw the “on goat” part … :lol:
This can’t be any worse than what Apple devotees have been doing for decades, and now their holy man has potentially ascended (or descended, depending on your perspective) to somewhere/something that’s ironically very much in the spirit of what Ramayana is apparently about. He would have probably admired the blessing of Pii and certainly understood it, given his pilgrimage to that part of the world to experience Being Different at a very formative stage in his life.
Poor Liz, now she’s going to have to put up with Eben becoming a Creator as well as all of the other well-deserved titles he’s been amassing over the past two very short years. Years? Years?? Plural??? We’ve been fooling around with this stuff for years already???? My, how time flies when you’re having fun! :D
Andy
The only things I know about Nepal I learnt from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Escape from Kathmandu, and I’m not sure how accurate it is.
But the hills there seem to make the Lake District look like Holland.
And as far as I can see the Hindu religion seems far more fun than Judaism / Christianity / Islam
bala
yes, as the religion gets older, its more fun from today’s perspective. Same applies to political idealogies, and also to technologies ;-)
David
Isn’t it about preparing to meet your Maker?
Raj
“Aayudha” puja or “Astra” puja is performed so that no harm is done by the inanimate instruments that we use in our daily life. That’s why vehicles, hardware tools and all sorts of equipment and appliances in the house are included in the list. RPi is no exception for people who like and use it..
Darpan Specchio Pudasaini
Here in nepal, we have been doing great in the field of DIYing and electronics, and special thanks to Raspberry pi, and arduino (I didn’t say it, ;) ) . Anyways, we hindus worship our tools and goods because we respect them. Cheers.