With God's blessings...

While scores of children across India die of malnutrition, millions of litres of milk is poured as offering to God in temples across India. Wonder how such contradictions come to play in India?

We merely rave and rant about it and stop practicing this ritual but 24-year old Karan Goel, went far ahead. He wanted to put an end to the amount of milk getting wasted. He, along with four of his former classmates have developed a system to collect and reuse the milk without contamination.

This Shivratri, at the Bileshwar Nath temple in Meerut, with cooperation from the priest, they first published pamphlets and distributed them to devotees, helping save over 100 litres of milk and distributed it to underprivileged and orphaned children.

Karan’s idea is very simple. Devotees pour milk on the kalash which is placed right above the Shivling. He made two holes in the Kalash — one on its base and the other one at a certain height. The Kalash had a capacity of seven litres. So he devised a system which ensured that after one litre of milk trickled down on the Shivling, the remaining six litres flowed into a container through the pipe attached to the second hole.

The apparatus used for this cost Rs 2500 to develop and helped save almost 150 litres of milk. This milk was then sent to Satyakaam Manav Seva Samiti, which provides shelter to orphaned children and HIV positive children. The temple at Meerut continues to use this simple technique.

Lets hope other temples also follow suit; no God would ever want his most vulnerable and smallest to go hungry while He is getting an overdose.