It all started with me being assigned the task of interviewing some web designers for employment in our organization. One of the bio data was of Pradeep Shah. What I found fascinating was – he required his employers to be flexible to some of his religious chores! Some of these were:

1. He required an 8 day holiday during Paryushana – a very important festival of Jains. Since he regularly fasts during the festival and also performs Puja, Pratikraman, etc, there is little time left to do any work. So he shouldn’t be given projects that would overlap with his festival time that comes only once a year.

2. Being a pure Jain, he does not eat potatoes, carrot, onions, and other root vegetables; so he would not be sharing his lunch with others during the lunch break. This information should be made known to his colleagues so they don’t consider him a prude.

3. He would never do overtime in the office as he has to reach home and have his dinner before sunset. However, if there is some urgent work, he wouldn’t mind taking it home as he has a computer at his residence.

4. He shouldn’t be required to participate in parties as food choice is very limited – he does not eat cake, wafers, etc, neither does he drink. If his attendance is required, jain food should be arranged.

This was the first time I had read such requirements in a biodata! Pradeep’s design skills were excellent and it would be great to have him with us, so I discussed this with my seniors. While there was no problem in adjusting to most of his religious needs, the 8 day holiday was a little problematic. Projects always came up suddenly and they were quite unpredictable as far as target dates were concerned. We then decided to take him in and when a situation arises, we would see what could be done. Already we were over burdened with projects and were having a tough time finding the right people.

During my interaction with Pradeep, I learnt a lot about Jainism, its beliefs, its ethics and practices, etc. He explained how humans were genetically vegetarians because we have a long small intestine and a long large intestine like other naturally vegetarian animals. Whereas carnivorous animals have a much shorter small and large intestine as they do not require a long time to absorb the nutrients from meat. When humans eat meat, it stays for a longer time in the intestine which can putrefy and create toxins that can cause colon cancer and increase the burden in the liver.

According to Jainism, a person is richer, luckier, better looking, suffers less pain, and enjoys the best things in life because of his good karma. If his karma is bad, after death, he will suffer in hell for an amount of time equivalent to the bad karma he has done. If it is good karma, he will be reborn again as a human.

Jainism also preaches ahimsa, which means that you should stick to non violence and you should not harm and living thing, nor should you make someone else harm another living thing. In fact, even imagining harm to another living thing induces sin and results in bad karma. I also learnt that your earn more bad karma when you harm living beings with “more senses”. There are living things which have only one sense of touch (like trees, plants, seeds, etc); two senses of touch and taste (like worms and microbes); three senses of touch, taste and smell (like ants, lice, etc); four senses of touch, taste, smell and sight (like spiders, crickets, etc) and finally, five senses of touch, smell, taste, sight and hear (like humans and animals). This means that you will sin more by killing a 5 sensed living being than a 4 or lesser sensed living being.

I hope you found my article informative. I will write more on this subject as I learn from him; Jainism is very fascinating! You can check updates by visiting http://www.bharatbhasha.com/author.php/Nirjara%20Rustom which has most of my articles. I mostly write on subjects like IT, health, success, etc.