Noida, India
An iPhone propped on a chair captured the service — known as a puja — and beamed it via Skype to a home in San Francisco, where a middle-aged woman wearing a red bindi and a head scarf watched intently.
Every so often, the priests peered into the screen and instructed her to mimic a gesture or repeat an incantation.
In Hinduism, the dominant religion among India’s 1.2 billion people, there are elaborate pujas for virtually every life event — and now there are virtual pujas too, along with last rites and other religious ceremonies being sold over the Internet.
This digital twist on a mystical, ancient faith is a growing part of India’s multibillion-dollar spirituality market. E-commerce sites also have popped up for Indian Muslims as well as minority Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists.
Offering their services anywhere in the world, the companies are capitalizing not only on improved Internet connectivity throughout India but also on a growing diaspora as more citizens immigrate for higher education and employment, leaving behind their families and spiritual networks.
According to a 2011 census, 11.4 million Indian citizens lived overseas. There are more than 3 million people of Indian origin living in the United States.
Among the companies cashing in is Shubhpuja.com.
The idea for selling religious services online came to Saumya Vardhan when she was living in London. A friend’s father died in New Delhi and his widow struggled to manage the extensive rituals of the traditional 13-day mourning period on her own.
Leaving her career as a management consultant, Vardhan moved back to India to start the company in 2013 with her father, Harsh Vardhan, a retired bureaucrat and aviation expert who practices Vedic astrology on the side.
The company now employs five priests, all with advanced degrees from Hindu religious institutions. It has equipped a decades-old temple in New Delhi’s Noida suburb with high-definition cameras and hard drives to record pujas for out-of-town clients.
Each month, the priests conduct hundreds of pujas and consultations, mainly for Indian customers but also for a growing roster of Hindu clients in the U.S., Europe and the Far East.
“People want to keep traditions alive but no one has time to keep up, especially if you are far away from home,” Saumya Vardhan said.
The company offers 151 pujas covering much of the human experience — extramarital affairs, bad grades, business setbacks, criminal cases, distractedness, studying abroad, stomach problems and being unpopular. Prices start at $10 and go up to nearly $500 for the “full wedding” package.
The San Francisco client wanted to resolve problems in her romantic life. Her service was custom-designed based on discussions with the priests and an astrological reading by Harsh Vardhan.
The priests began the ceremony by summoning Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god and remover of obstacles. It ended a little more than an hour later with an arti — a ceremonial offering to the gods of light from a fire — before each person in the room turned 360 degrees to mimic Earth’s rotation.
But can an online puja work as well as having the devotee in the room?
“The most important thing in a puja is the vibrations,” said Narayan Shastri, one of the dhoti-clad priests. “As long as she is following the actions with her own hand and saying the mantras, the sound travels the same whether it’s through the air or through a mobile phone.”
At least some customers report good results.
One, who grew up in New Delhi and now lives in Northern California, turned to Shubhpuja more than a year ago when he felt he wasn’t advancing in his job as a program manager. Ankit, who did not want his full name used, said several telephone and Skype sessions convinced him that his rough career patch was due to a temporary planetary alignment.
He stuck with the job and soon received a promotion.
Though he was not very religious growing up, he said the professionalism of the priests reconnected him to the family pujas of his childhood. The day before a Skype session, he would receive a list of instructions: Don’t eat meat, don’t drink alcohol, wear light colors and find a quiet place in your house to sit. “Then you just log in at the appointed time and follow along,” he said.