Nude Pooja

There is more proof that a religious pretext for sex is not the exclusive domain of the Catholic Church. Actually, I should amend that. Taking a choir boy behind the altar for a 'BJ' is not usually done with pretext of a religious ceremony. That is usually done when a person of trust has taken advantage of an innocent because the perpetrator of the crime is simply a trusted figure, and only later in life (with thousands of hours of therapy) does the victim realize that their responses were because of their own naive trust and not something they have done wrong. There is a very special place in hell waiting for those who take advantage of innocence. There is also something called "Rule of Law." If I did not believe that I would have to believe in something much stronger like, say, hanging parties.

However, in the so-called third world, there is a lot of room for using religious ceremonies for things that are no less serious, but in a context that seems very bizarre to our western tastes. In India (once again), there is the case where a woman was evidently accused of being possessed by an evil spirit and the husband wanted to something about it. Now, we DO have things like exorcism in the Catholic Church, but usually the possessee does not have to be female and naked for the exorcism to work.

When the husband heard her screams he rushed into the room and saw the future defendant performing a "naked Pooja" on her, he tackled the swami and tied HIS pathetic ass up until the police could get there before the hanging party had time to sign up all the participants.

Naked pooja? A word for the wise here: when a religious figure uses the term "naked" in front of any religious ceremony, check the fine print and ask for an ID immediately. I am not going to be convinced right away that that is enough, but it works for a starter. Evidently the entire village was going to take whatever action necessary to rid itself of this pestilence. I cannot for a second blame them. I CAN, however, blame them for a view of reality that includes the necessity of making one's wife the object of an exorcism. The article is empty of details about WHY the idiot would have taken a woman to a "pooja" to begin with, but in a country where women are ritually burned alive when the family is not happy with the bride-price or acid is thrown in the face of prospective brides when the finances are not convenient to the groom makes me wonder what the hell was going on to begin with. Was she unhappy about being asked to do things she was not happy about? Was she just simply Hell on wheels and he was looking for hope?

In this country we have a thing called "divorce court." Better than that, you can get therapy, or as a last resort you can go to any software company in the country and get a software program that will write the whole damn thing up without the expense of a lawyer.

All of that notwithstanding, there is till no room, even in India, for a "naked pooja", whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.