If you don't go to the temple ...

… the temple’s gonna come to you. Right where you hang out – you don’t need to go an inch out of your way. In the midst of mall crawling, multiplexing, coffee-barring and pub-hopping, you can hop over to a readily accessible agent-of-god and get a dose of jukebox religion.

A bit of trivia I read a few days ago but have not been able to dislodge from my mind. The ‘culture ministry’ in Thailand, in an apparent burst of marketing savvy, would like to install monks in malls. Because (allow me to quote) "People nowadays have no time to go to temples, only shopping malls. They can get closer to religion if we provide the opportunity".

Seriously? Well, I know that the barefoot-up-the-mountain pilgrimage is probably passé, but … seriously?

I’m not sure what it is about this that bothers me so. I’m not particularly religious myself – have not been to a temple or any other place of worship in years – and I also don’t need to take up cudgels on behalf of those who do take religion seriously. Nor do I belong to the down-with-the-malls camp (occasional pangs of nostalgia for Sunday mornings at Russell Market notwithstanding). I revel in plush, air-conditioned shopping spaces, I’ve been known to get lost in supermarkets for unrespectable lengths of time and I’m properly grateful for the ease that all-in-one-place malls bring in the midst of an overworked, over traffic-jammed, never-any-parking bustle. I’m delighted to be a mollycoddled consumer, and thank you for all the convenience.

And that is precisely the point. Malls are about making the mundane more pleasurable and easier to get done – but surely not about reducing the potentially magical aspects of life to mundanity? Isn’t there a limit to what we’re spoon-fed in pre-digested, bite-sized doses? I’m also a bit intrigued that the advocates of religion – or spirituality – would think of this made-easy format as a desirable objective. Would this really work as a way for people to “get” religion?

Oh well. If others can benefit from marketing wisdom, why not religion? What’s sauce for the goose, and all that. Distribution, packaging and visibility … aren’t those the mantras for everyone? If shiny gold packaging works for coffee (pouted the priest) why not for me? Why not, indeed?

A young friend who read this snippet along with me had an entirely different take on the issue. The culture ministry apparently wants to “campaign for religion in places where teenagers gather" – a piece of information that caused a spontaneous shudder. “Oh, gross. I hope they don’t get the same idea in India. Imagine having to stub out your cigarette hastily because there’s a pundit sitting across from you in Coffee Day”. Hmmm. There’s a thought there for worried parents, though.