Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu: Remember the movie The Pursuit of Happyness where a man’s unrelenting quest for a lost gadget reflected the highs and lows of life? Like Chris Gardener, Dinesh, a Chennai resident, too has been caught in the dilemma of highs and lows after losing his iPhone six months back. The only solace: he saw his prized and expensive phone not stolen or misplaced but fall into the Sri Kandaswamy Temple hundi (donation box) at Thiruporur, right in front of his eyes, though accidentally.
Dinesh immediately approached the temple, but the officials were in no mood to listen. They believed once in hundi, always a temple property. Though they sympathetically listened to his plight, they firmly reminded him that the hundi, belongs to the deity. So it was no longer his iPhone; it was Lord Murugan’s now.
Months later, when temple authorities opened the hundi, they found the usual cash, gold, and silver and a shiny iPhone. “At least let me see if my data’s intact,” Dinesh pleaded upon reaching the temple. Unrelenting to hand over the phone back to Dinesh, they offered to extract personal data from the phone.
For now, the fate of the iPhone hangs in the balance, much like Dinesh’s patience.
Social media, as always, saw the humour in the situation. Some suggested the iPhone was seeking blessings for an extended battery life. Others quipped that maybe Lord Murugan needed a better camera for celestial selfies. A few philosophical minds pondered whether technology could truly be considered an offering to the gods, while some wondered if the deity’s temple Wi-Fi had seen an upgrade too.
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