Hindu Temples vs. Starbucks

Hindu Temples are as common in Tamil Nadu as Starbucks on the streets of New York City. This hypothesis doesn't need any factual support with numbers and statistics, all you have to do is go for a walk in either place, take that amount as equivalent to the other then you can understand the magnitude of both coffee monopolies and religious invasion. Ten years ago NYC was full of small businesses setting up great coffee shop with themes and atmosphere. Whether you were in Chelsea or Soho the locals would be able to guide you in the direction of a coffee shop that was uniquely New York. Once Starbucks took off and buying overpriced latte's became trendy, because what else can starving artists and underpaid waitresses afford? Maybe one sample at the Triple Five Soul sample sale per year, but enough Starbucks frappachino's to fulfill their daily need for caffeine they multiplied forcing all the small business back to jersey or upstate to struggle with small town shops and cafes. Result: Starbucks is a huge success and monopolizes the coffee industry in NY and across the US as well. Well, no longer am I a New Yorker, I am an Indian girl, or at least I am trying to become one. Okay I can't speak Tamil though one of the recognized national languages is English, and I posses brown hair and hazel eyes, but I wear the local dress hang out with only local people, eat and cook the local food, so those factors should count for some transformation in me. If you walk down my street in Chengelpattu you pass some churches, boarding schools, hospitals and shops, but in every Hindu shop, and let's face it most of the shop owners are caste people so they are Hindu, there is a small shrine. In between the churches and schools are wooden huts sheltering statues of Ganesh or Shiva. This doesn't account for the two story tall blue cats that protect the Hindu temples when you drive from Chengelpattu to Pondicherry or the historical sandstone temple which consists of four temples inside the fortress walls that makes Tanjore so famous, no, only I'm speaking about Chengelpattu itself. If you go inside any Hindu persons home they definitely have a turmeric or sandalwood mark on their door to bless their home and they will have a small shrine or a shelf full of idols that they can worship any time they wake up, after going to toilet, or after returning from the wine shop. So we've discusses the homes, makeshift shrines, shop devotees and large temples throughout the state, but what about the individual temples themselves. If a Hindu person own land there will be a temple there. In a village in the Hindu section there will be a temple there. Even on the dashboard of a Hindu car there will be a god to worship and adorn with fresh flowers everyday. You pass the colorfully rainbow colored tower style temples taking the bus anywhere on any highway. You see the Hindus dressed in bright red going for pilgrimage to the appropriate temple that they feel is best. You see the stark white temples where the gods all blend together with faint shadows separating their bodies from cow tails and other architectural details. After seeing this blasphemy of religion, if you can call a system of idol worship that supports an oppressive system of caste religion, everywhere it becomes as common as trash piles that the cows munch on all day. It is so common that the people themselves oppress because of the Hindu religion and it's smirti without even realizing why or how their own beliefs allow them to degrade other human to feel less than the dirt they themselves walk on. Once a few people can realize how common and robotic their entire "religion" is then they can start to think for themselves and realize the mistake they have made by adorning a plastic cow with jasmine flowers in the perfect shade of ivory.