Association of Maha Shivaratri With Bhang (Cannabis)

Hi friends!

Today India is celebrating Mahashivaratri - a major festival in Hinduism celebrated since ancient times. Spring festivals like Maha Shivaratri and Holi have a strong association with Bhang or Cannabis infused drinks like Thandai.

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Some days in everyone's life get firmly connected with past incidents, and automatically makes you recollect those incidents on these particular days. Maha Shivaratri is one such day. It won't stop me laughing whenever I recall some incidents that happened in my life on these days. I'd like to share a couple of them here.

In those days, I was living in Dehradun - a city in the foothills of Himalayas. It was the day of Maha Shivaratri and a holiday in my office. But due to some work, I and one of my employees were working on that day. In afternoon, my employee suggested me to visit the Shiva temple that was about 15-20 km uphill on the way to Mussoorie. I agreed to his suggestion and we both went there.

It's a famous temple and the only one I saw so far where it is specifically written that no devotee should make any donation to the temple. My employee told me that they give a good prasad on darshan and he looks forward to it.

There was a long queue but the atmosphere of the temple was very pleasant. A team of band -baaja was playing very sweet devotional music. Soon our turn for darshan came. They gave me some hot and spicy pakodas and a packet of Thandai as prasad.

Those pakodas were very tasty and I ate them all as soon as we came out of the temple premises. Then I asked my employee, what should I do with this Thandai as it may be infused with bhang. He told me that it's very lightly infused and you can consume it. As we need to consume Lord's prasadam, I opened the packet and drank all that thandai. (Later I came to know that those pakoras too were prepared by mixing some bhang).

But my employee wanted some more bhang. So he again went for the darshan and got some more pakoras and thandai. But I didn't shared that when he offered to me. So he had to consume all that he got. Then we left for the office.

We were on the motor bike. On the way, he asked me, "Sir, aisa nahi lagta hai ki yeh raste chalte hi ja rahe hain aur khatma hi nahi ho rahe?". I only laughed at his statement. But after some time he told me that Bhang was a little too much and it has started to show its effect. He was feeling some giddiness.

I had never consumed Bhang before and didn't had any idea about its effects. But I too began to feel what he was talking seems true to me too. So I asked him what should I do? He said to drive quickly to office. And I increased my driving speed. But by the time we reached office, I too started feeling some strange dizziness in my head.

Thankfully, we reached office. As soon as we unlocked it, we both lied down on sofas. I was surprised to see that the effect of Bhang was increasing with time and I was in a sort of inebriated state. Even after resting for half an hour, the situation didn't get any better. So my employee phoned another employee. Soon two of my employees came to the office. They both were celebrating holiday with a bottle of vodka. They brought a vodka bottle along.

Then they convinced me that I should drink a little vodka to do away with the effect of Bhang. Initially, I thought they were kidding. But they looked very serious. Both of them were older to me, so I thought they know better on this subject. I didn't know anything. So I gave in and sipped some vodka.

I still don't know if that vodka worked or not. But we all four had a good fun in the office until evening. Thankfully. by evening I felt better and safely returned to my home.

Now I've already crossed my word limit for this post. So I'm not telling you about the second incident. But to give you an idea, the next year, I took my parents to that same temple on this day. What happened next thrills me to this day.

I hope you too must have some funny incidents in your memory on Maha Shivaratri or Holi.

Wishing you all a happy and fun-filled Maha Shivaratri! 😊