Talking about this with a friend I realised that he had not seen this piece of news and that I would search for this on the net and email it to him. My search showed up many newspapers having carried this story and Deccan Chronicle was definitely not the first to do so. I had thanked DC for bringing me this piece of odd news earlier and now when I found that the news was actually 6 years and more old and that over these years many magazines and newspapers and TV Channels had carried this news in various forms.
News is for everyone and no one claim copyright to news, but when people plagiarize pictures and words blatantly it definitely is worrying and suddenly my faith and belief in journalists starts going downhill.
This piece of news with what I gather was featured first in India Today in 2001 and then has been featured in other papers, magazines and websites all of whom being too numerous I have not bothered to list. However, you will find a small list of well known magazines, papers below with links.
Please do visit the links and see for yourself how news spreads.
India Today issue: 21st march 2001
BBC News - South Asia - 3rd Feb 2006
The Asian Age: Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Telegraph - Calcutta - | Monday, January 31, 2005 |
The Organiser - May 2006
The Siliconeer - February 2006
Here is the news item as it appeared in Asian Age in 2007.
Bhubaneswar: If a devotee wants to offer a coconut to the Maa Tarini Thakurani temple located within the forests of Keonjhar, he just has to wrap it in red cloth and wave it while standing on any road in the State.
The next bus which comes along will surely stop and the driver or conductor will accept the coconut with reverence.
It does not matter if the bus is traveling on another route. The driver will see to it that coconut is passed on to a vehicle traveling in the direction of the temple. Then it gets passed on from one person to another till it reaches the Maa Tarini Thakurani temple.
This unparalleled courier service has no commercial motive at all. It is driven purely by faith.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, lend their hand every day to reach coconuts of devotees to the doorsteps of the deity.
Around 15,000 coconuts are delivered every day to the Maa Tarini Thakurani temple at Ghatgaon through this amazing spontaneously organized network. It relies on the goodwill of people, a network of collection boxes on roads and other temples.
"Coconuts change hands like batons in a relay race before reaching the temple," said Guru Charan Singh, secretary of the temple trust. "It is a religious courier service."
In recent years, the deity's fame has extended beyond the borders of Orissa and people are sending coconuts from other States too. They are certain that their offering will reach the Goddess somehow. And the courier system is at work for them.
It is not unusual to find transport buses going to Keonjhar stacked with coconuts picked on the way.
Drivers on the route believe that carrying coconuts to the deity will ensure a safe journey.
"We will invite the wrath of Maa Tarini if we refuse to transport these coconuts," said Harihara Madhi, who drives a bus between Bhubaneswar and Keonjhar. "We may have engine trouble or even accidents."
Local people have a store of stories about the problems faced by those who refused to carry the coconuts.
"The Goddess rules the highway," says Shyama Ghana Mohanty, a road-side dhaba owner.
Buses offload the coconuts in collection boxes from which they are picked up by other vehicles or devotees.
But all the coconuts that reach the temple are not offered to the deity. "It would be impossible to crack open thousands of coconuts each day," said Singh.
"A few hundreds are offered to the Goddess and the rest are sold," Singh said.
The coconuts are sold by the temple authorities at Rs 2 each in the local market. "The temple earns around Rs 30 lakhs annually through this," added Singh.
Around 1,000 Tarini temples have come up in different parts of the State in the last five years and all of them serve as collection points for the coconuts going to the main Maa Tarini Thakurani temple.
The unique courier service has become a subject of study for management students.
"It is really amazing to see how the system runs effectively without any commercial interest," said Gopal Nayak, professor in the Xavier Institute of Management of Bhuba-neswar.
