Religion permeates almost everything in India. There are cigarette shops named after gods. From my friend’s roof you can see a mosque, church, and temple; all within about 150 feet. Almost every business has some small shrine to one god or another; just a small thing with some candles, incense, and recently placed garlands.

So when my company moved to a new location I was told that we would have to have a pooja. What is that, I asked. It’s where the office gets blessed. Oh, ok.

The separation of church and state is pretty solid in the US (pledge of allegiance, 10 commandment statues, and federal funding of religiously motivated social organization’s aside). If a US company brought in a Priest, Rabbi, or Witchdoctor to bless a new office I am sure that pandemonium and law suits would breakout everywhere.

So it was with great interest that I took off my shoes, walked quietly into the conference room, and sat cross-legged on the floor with my colleagues. In one corner sat our managing director with his wife and two young children in front of a picture of Ganesh adorned with flowers, candles, bananas, rice, coconuts, candy, and incense. By the time I entered the ceremony had already begun so the Hindu priest was chanting the same verse over and over while individually calling up each male member of the staff, tying a thin red rope around his wrist, and applying red paste and rice to the center of his forehead (see picture).

When it was my turn there was a faint murmur of chuckles given the odd cultural juxtaposition and the intense sincerity written on my face. I kneeled down and the priest tied the string and applied the dot and I was done.

When all the men had been done the women went up, but he wouldn’t apply the paste to their foreheads, he would only give it to them on the end of one of their fingers and they would have to apply it themselves (I later learned this is because the “bindi” (the dot) should only be applied by a women’s father or husband). They also didn’t get any rice pushed into their forehead.

So then I sat there as the rest of the office was blessed. Every once in a while a red piece of rice would fall of my forehead while I squirmed to find enough floor space to accommodate my increasingly inflexible legs.

Once everyone had been blessed we all had to go in front of the shrine and hold the bowl of burning oil and spin it in three circles. While we did this some of the older women, our managing director’s mother and her relatives, I believe, reached out for the smoke and motioned it over their heads.

When it was all over they broke out a few boxes of sweets (in line with the recent New York Times article on diabetes in India) and we went on with our day.