Recently (last week, by the way this is 2015 AD) we invited some people (10-15) for a
lunch and a get together. It was just a get together and not a religious ritual
or function like satya narayan / pooja / hom havan etc. etc. It was not a
dinner but lunch so obviously it was day time. Since it was not a religious
kind of function we just picked suitable Sunday for everybody's convenience.
But one day before the agreed date we started getting calls
from those invitees turning down our invitation. One of them told us that due
to health problem they will not be able to make it, which was not a genuine reason.
Then another person, to whom I have great respect, told us the fact or real
reason of boycotting us or our get together. This person himself was ready to
come but due to some other reason he also decided not to come.
To my surprise, the reason was, it was a amavasya (a new Moon day). This reason really shocked me, may be because
I am not a 'typical' god fearing or hardcore religious person. I don't want to
fight with anybody those who are of opinion that we were wrong and they were
right. I was shocked for two reasons.
One, some of these guests were highly educated and all of them were from urban area
with fairly modern life style. Secondly, why these people did not tell us the
reason frankly on our face. I know that on normal Marathi calendar so called important events like
Amavsya and Pornima are highlighted but it got overlooked by us as we were not
arranging any kind of religious function.
This subject is very big and must be inconclusive even for
religious scholars as well. My little brain may not handle these high end
rituals, I think reason of restricting activities on amavasya (new Moon) must be related with darkness that
occurs during the night on this day. It must the important reason to avoid
human movement, prone to accidents in the night due to lack of moon light. This
must a reason to observe Amavasya in the past when electricity was not
invented. There may be other reasons
like high tide / low tide etc but I don't think it was fair reason to cancel a
get together because this day was happened to be a amavasya. It may be my
ignorance or lack of knowledge if there are other reasons to cancel a simple
casual get together because it was a New Moon Day.
