{"id":6558,"date":"2008-01-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-26T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/26\/buying-a-new-car-get-a-car-blessing\/"},"modified":"2008-01-26T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-26T12:00:00","slug":"buying-a-new-car-get-a-car-blessing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/26\/buying-a-new-car-get-a-car-blessing\/","title":{"rendered":"Buying a New Car? Get a Car Blessing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.newindpress.com\/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEP20080122072316&#038;Page=P&#038;Title=Nation&#038;Topic=0\">www.newindpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">NEW DELHI, INDIA, January 22, 2008: What about going to a dealer who along with freebies, offers a free puja for the car with a priest in attendance?<\/p>\n<p>As Indian priests hop from household to household performing pujas in the capital, they now have a new job opening, performing quick puja for the customers at showrooms before they drive away with the four-wheeler. Aware of the fact that in a country like India most of Hindu life has a mark of religiosity, many dealers have now started to provide the grand-old service of performing customary rituals and ceremonies right at the car showrooms.<\/p>\n<p>Raman Gupta,  who is a manager in a leading it company, recently bought a new Maruti from a car dealer in the capital. Like many middle-class Indians, he also believes in starting any new work after performing some rituals. Just as he was about to leave for a Hanuman mandir in the nearby area, a person from the showroom approached him and introduced himself as Pandit Radhamohan Tyagi, a priest deployed by the outlet. In just 15 minutes, Pundit and his disciple performed all the rituals from coconut-breaking and swastika smearing to arati and all. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am really delighted at the service being offered by the company at no extra cost&#8221;, says wife of Raman, Seema Gupta. Pandit is happy too.&#8221;We perform every ritual as per the demand of customer and get paid by the company&#8221;, he says. &#8220;Moreover, we get handsomely paid by the owners of the showroom as against the low income from being at temples and homes. So, I have adopted to work for them.&#8221;  India is one of the world&#8217;s fastest growing car markets.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.newindpress.com NEW DELHI, INDIA, January 22, 2008: What about going to a dealer who along with freebies, offers a free,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}