Sattayanarayan Bhagwan Katha (Holy Story)

Sattyanarayan (Name of God) Puja (Prayer) is part of Hindu’s life in India. Sattyanarayan Katha (a narration of true happenings heard from one generation to other) include some interesting narrations that present how important it is for everyone to do Satyanarayanan’s Puja and what can be the implications of ignoring it.

This Puja is performed by a pundit ( the Hindu Priest) or by yourself. It is firmly believed that by performing this Puja your wishes will come true and you will be prosperous.

I would like to only tell about some part of the story that i remember that i heard directly from the pundit.

Part 5 of the story:

- A Businessman visits a River, where he finds lot of people are standing, he inquire and finds that the King is doing a Puja. He asks the King as what is this Puja. Kings tells him that he is performing Sattayanarayan Bhagwan(the lord) Puja, Because he has everything in his empire like Wealth, Prosperity and Happiness but no Child. By performing this Puja he will get a Child (Santan in Hindi).

- The businessman tell the King, that he wish King will certainly get a Child from this Puja. He tells that he himself is also in need for a child and would like to learn how to perform the Puja. The King tells him the procedure to perform the Puja (it is very good to teach others how to perform puja).

- After learning how to perform the Puja, the businessman returns to his home and tells his wife Leelavati (Wife’s name) that he has learned about Satyanarayanan Puja which will certainly result in they, having a child (preferably Son). The wife is happy and tells her husband to perform the Puja.

- After reviewing the spendings for the Puja, The businessman feels, what if he did not get a child after doing the Puja. He will make a loss, so he decides that he will do the Puja after getting the Child (preferably Son).

-The lord, Sattayanarayan (The lord can see everything thats happening in this world) hearing his miserly observations, fulfills his wish to have a child. Soon a Girl Child takes birth and they name it Kalavati. The Leelavati , the wife of the businessman tells her husband to do the puja as he had promised . The businessman again reviews the cost of doing the Puja and then tell that he had asked for a Son but got a daughter, its fine but lets do puja once the daughter gets married.

- 20 years pass, and their daughter gets young to marry. The businessman sends his person to a town to find a suitable match for her daughter. Soon he gets a suitable match and the businessman do a big function and completes the marriage of his daughter.

- After marriage , Leelavati again tells her husband to do the Puja as he promised, but the businessman again ignores it. Now the lord Satyanarayanan is very unhappy with the businessman and plans to teach him a lesson.

- Soon Businessman leaves for business with his son in law, by sea to a new empire called Chandra gupt ( the name of the King). While doing business they earn lots and lots of money (Gold) and were planning to return back by the ship (small in size).

- By the curse of the lord Sattayanarayan, a theft happens in the empire of Chandra Gupt and the thieves while escaping the soldiers of the king, throw the stolen goods in the ship of the businessman.

- The soldiers of the king finds the stolen goods in the ship and catches the businessman and his son in law and take them to the King. The King without thinking on the case, due to the effect of the Sattayanarayan put them in the prison with hard work and takes away all the money (Gold) they had earned.

- The Leelavati and her daughter Kalavati become deserted to find that their husband have not returned even after very long. Also some theft happen in their home and all their money is lost. This make it necessary for the Kalavati to work as servant to earn the living.

- Kalavati while working as a servant in one Brahmin family (the priest family) learns about the Sattayanarayan Puja and tells her mother about this. Instantly her mother Leelavati, remembers that this is the same Puja that her husband had talked about but never performed.

-She immediately realize that it is due to the curse of the lord Sattayanarayan, that all this is happening in her family. She immediately collect all her resources and performs the puja with full heart and wish the lord to return her husband, son in law and her family’s prosperity.

- The lord, Sattayanarayan become very happy with her Puja, and immediately come in the dream of the King, and instructs him to immediately release the businessman and his son in law and return their wealth and if he do not do it, then the lord will destroy his wealth and kingdom.

- The king terrified with the instructions, immediately release them in the morning, give them good cloths to wear, gives them double the money (gold) that he had confiscated from them. He tells them that they got detained due to some unfortunate incident and are being released.

- The businessman and his son in law now plans to return to their home with the ship. Their ship was now heavy with lot of gold.

- The lord Sattayanarayan, now plans to test the businessman, if he has become loyal. The lord become a weak Holy man and goto the businessman to ask for some money (it is custom to give some part of the money/food one earns, to the holy man in Hindu religion), The businessman ignore him and tell that he has no money. The holy man tells him that, he will be happy with whatever he may have in his ship. The businessman tells that he has useless plants and leaves in his ship to avoid the holyman. The lord (in the form of holy man) says “Ta-thastu” (As you wish) and immediately the complete Gold in the ship becomes useless plants and leaves. The holy man leaves them and sits near the sea shore.

- The ship become light and start rising in water (as gold got converted into plants), observing this the businessman and his son in law go inside the ship to check their gold but only finds the useless plants and leaves. They immediately realize that the holyman was the lord and goto him.

- They pray him to forgive them. The lord forgive them and convert plants back to the Gold. The businessman now decides to go back home immediately. They also send the messenger to their home to tell about their arrival date and time.

- Learning that their husbands will come back, Leelavati and Kalavati plans to perform Sattayanarayan Puja again. They quickly perform the puja and Leelavati immediately leaves for the sea shore to look for the ship.

- The lord , create a storm that make the people waiting at the shore believe that the ship of the businessman has drowned.

- The Leelavati prays to the lord, as why is this happening to her , even after she performed the puja. The lord, tells the Leelavati that this storm happened because she left the Puja in between without taking the Prasad (the sweet desert served at the end of the Puja). She immediately returns to home and completes the Puja. Immediately the storm ends and her husband and son in law return back.

This is just one part (but the main and longest part) (5th part) of the complete Sattayanarayan katha. I wrote this in this blog because while hearing the Puja, a thought came to my mind, “why not write this story on the internet blog for people to read”.

I prayed to the lord Satyanarayanan to help me in expanding my internet business and I will in return write a blog on his name. (normally people will promise to do Satyanarayanan Puja) but I think by writing a blog, I will get the similar benefit by letting billions of people learn about the lord Satyanarayanan and their Puja.

I hope the lord will guide me in future to write more about his Puja and Katha. Please respect this narration and let other read it, like a holy book and avoid giving comments and exploring logic behind the story.

If you like to learn more about Sattayanarayan Katha & Puja, you are happy to contact me.

Growth, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Governance in India

Indian growth story is being talked a lot worldwide. Many compare it with China. Many point out unique strengths of India.

I would like to point out how things are happening in India and where are bottle necks..

- I have seen two growth cycles of India each of 5 years. How things go up and how they come down. Stock markets represent the growth in India to people outside. If stock market is bullish everyone say that India is growing and if its coming down everyone says growth has stopped.

- Real Estate prices go up along with the stock market and also come down with it. This is very problematic situations as in most other countries this is not so.

- Real Estate boom starts because of the real business growth in India, but is overtaken by Investment lead growth. e.g. Recently the continuous boom in IT & ITeS industry created millions of jobs and people moved to bigger cities where this industry exist. They needed cost effective homes, Good interest rates and home finance lending lead to lot of demand and the real estate industry started growing. it also lead to lot of domestic growth as new jobs created new buying power. Surely few other sectors like Automobiles, Textiles, Diamonds also created lots of jobs but such jobs had limited buying power. Telecom also contributed a lot.

- As the growth started more and more industries came up benefit from it. But soon so much FDI (foreign Direct Investment) started coming to India who started investing in every field possible by making an assumption that India growth story is starting. This investment is normally quite substantial and very lucrative for Indian businessman.

- When such investment is available easily, it completely shift the mindset of Indian businessman form the core fundamentals of growth to investment oriented growth. Where they focus how they can get more and more investment with little focus on how well they convert that investment into what Indian consumer needs.

- NRI (Non Resident Indians) investment also start coming more and more to India. as NRI take lot of loans abroad and invest in India if growth prospects are better. They may also move lot of their savings. Most of this NRI investment go into Real Estate. Lot of other Foreign money also go into Real estate indirectly.

- Due to very large amount of flow of money into Indian real estate segment, the demand quickly increases. I sometimes feel that several millions of NRIs as well as international investors are always waiting for Indian growth story to start, and as they feel it starts, all of them jump in together to cash on it.

- But India has lot of governance and infrastructure issues, due to this its not capable of taking so much investment together. e.g. Supply of real-estate and land is highly effected by government policies and planning. When demand increase the supply hardly increase .

- Political & Bureaucracy class which make all policies, normally hold lot of investments in Real estate, specially land mostly in Black (illegitimate). When they see the real estate prices rising, they are always interested in shortage to get created and their own land prices go up significantly before they sell them off. Hence they are not keen to let Demand & Supply match.

- Once the price increase significantly, they start selling their prime land and start buying land around the city. Later they change policies to include the peripheral land inside the city or under some scheme plan to provide infrastructure there and let the supply come to market, slowly.

- Most builders are affiliated with Political & Bureaucracy class and they work as per their plans. They always need land and infrastructure for their projects… This partnership ensure that the growth falls quickly into a bottleneck.

- Mainly these people are interested in cashing on the investments that come from NRI or other indirect investment. NRI and other businessman invest in high priced properties considering their price will increase and they will make quick money.

- But in this game, the real Indian worker is totally forgotten, the one who started this growth story. Who is spellbound with what is happening with the lovely growth story whose part he was. he thinks he has lost the race as other have gone far ahead. But he is very intelligent decision maker, he re align his budget, he will never buy costly properties or goods.

- All this game happen in a different way at stock markets. where industrialists forget the real growth drivers, and just start working to get more and more investments by making tall claims to achieve higher prices for their company stocks. They forget to increase salaries and make great products for the consumer who helped him become part of the growth story. on the other hand these companies start offering futuristic products that invest think is great product to launch and he is happy to give money for it.

- After lot of hip-hop one sudden day some intelligent analysts and government finds that the consumer purchases have gone down, no one is buying homes and consumer goods. Suddenly all start talking how to ensure that growth will continue and consumer will start buying again. Some intelligent and dedicated industrialists and businessman start re-aligning their products and decrease prices.

- But the big ones are still dreaming of quick bucks and paper wealth. Suddenly things look downwards, the stock market start falling. The real estate price start falling. and the complete Indian growth story that was created looks like loosing its steam. Investors pull back after losses.

- Then it takes few years of innovation, focus on Indian customers to again create a new Indian growth story…

My question is why we loose the focus on Indian consumer & Innovation. Why can’t we regulate growth to ensure it doesnot loose steam. Government has important role to play in this but when they themselves are involved in this game how can we expect them to control it.

I think that it will take several cycles of such growth may be 100 cycles to become a developed country.

But we should be somewhat happy that at least we are not going the wrong way like many other countries around us like pakistan, bangladesh, Nepal, Srilanka. and many African countries who has huge political problems and are almost in negative growth overall..