If you are using Internet & Email for quite some time then you must have received so many Chain Mails in your life time. Many of these Chain Mails might have invoked you to make some wishes before forwarding those "Ganesh Vandana", "Tirupathi Balaji" pics etc...etc. & at the end of that chain mail here below notice might have been there...........
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you do not send this e-mail to at least 12 people in the next 10 seconds............... guess what could happen?? & due to fear in your mind due to that warning, you might have forwarded that email to exactly 12 of your friends & so have done your friends too in turn & hence due to that fear factor in your mind that Chain Mail might have traveled across the Globe many times.
O.K. that is Internet & all together a different domain than one's real life. But what if something similar happens in real life. Yes exactly that happened in Kashmir Valley in India when hundreds of couples offered rice and money at a shrine here following rumors that a Sufi saint had asked all couples with a lone son to donate generously.
The story spread across the Kashmir Valley was that Ahad Sahib, a popular Sufi saint from north Kashmir's Sopore town, had a dream and asked all parents who had a lone son to offer rice and money at the shrine of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jeelani, known as Dastgeer Sahib, situated in Khanyar locality of Srinagar city.
To add to it, the rumor also had it that unless the offerings were made immediately, the couple would soon come to grief.
Hundreds of of people took the warning seriously, thronging the shrine with offerings of rice and money. The devotees who landed up Dastgeer Sahib included educated Kashmiris as well as peasants from the countryside.
'It's alright even if it was a rumor. There is no harm in making the offering,' said Sheikh Bilal, an agricultural scientist who had come from Ganderbal district to make an offering at the shrine.
The shrine management engaged additional staff to cope with the rush of devotees.
'I heard the news in the afternoon. I hired a taxi as my wife was keen to make the offering today itself,' said Abdul Salam Wani, 56, who came all the way from Kokernag town in south Kashmir's Anantnag district.
Though by evening there were reports that the saint denied asking people to make offerings, the crowd at the shrine continued to swell. At the day's end, the shrine had received hundreds of quintals of rice and millions of rupees.
'Faith doesn't allow any chances to be taken. It hardly matters now whether the news was a fact or a rumor. I have made the offerings,' said Manzoor Ahmad Gora, another agricultural scientist here.
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Labels: devotees, God, Kashmir, offering, Shrine, Sufi
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