Athithi devo bhava

Hello friends in this blog I want to put before some aspects of the host and guest relationship.

One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
Max Beerbohm.

MATRU DEVO BHAVA
PITRU DEVOBHAVA
ATHITHI DEVO BHAVA

What do these above quotes mean? Treat your mother as God, your father as God and guest as God.

Every house where love abides And friendship is a guest, is surely home, and home, sweet home for there the heart can rest. ~Henry van Dyke

The ornaments of your house will be the guests who frequent it.

-Author Unknown

There is a very great relationship between a host and guest in our country.
Host means the person residing in his place. Guest means a person who visits a place.

Host should have these qualities in him/her
H-honour
O-Offer
S-serve
T-treat

With all these qualities  a person should look upon a guest by
G-greeting, U-unbending, E-entertaining, S-sharing, T-thanking.

I hope you have understood my interpretations.In olden days  every host awaited for the visit of  a guest ,to serve them in the best way possible. They were delighted to spend time with them, discuss common topics, share their views, have fun, sit together and have food so that they were completely diverted from the day to day stress.

Lord Krishna treated his childhood friend Sudama as a guest and spent much of his time, which made Sudhama recollect  his childhood days with Krishna and he was totally  immersed with the Lord's hospitality such incidents  has happened  since  ancient times.

 In the recent years there is some sort of communication gap is seen. Sometimes when a guest visits our homes, the host is so busy that they don't have time to tell hello, or they are busy watching TV, computers and so on.

What has happened to Indian culture?

Why should someone visit your house? It is not that they have some work with you, may be they did, but even then he is a guest to your house. So it is the host's duty to honour, offer serve and treat him properly.

Whenever a person comes to our house we should greet him with a smile so that he is assured that his coming  is accepted by us.

What happens if we sit and talk with him for a few minutes, it costs nothing. The fundamental principle of host is to treat the guest with courtesy, talk to him politely not inculcating with his personal affairs to poke him. After all he spends a few minutes or hours with us. Then why should we not take this opportunity to spend time healthily and merrily. Every acquaintance with a guest should be a good memory for us not a bad memory.

The modern generation can spend their valuable time in playing games, and spend their time with  Facebook, whatsapp etc. But cannot talk and spend a few moments with the people who visit them. This is ridiculous.

So why don't we mend these shortcomings .After all when guest visits our house we will have some diversion from our routine life. If they are our family members or friends we can recollect some of our happiest memories of childhood, schooldays and so on which we make us feel refreshed.

Friends in this modern world I am afraid we are losing smiling faces,each person is engrossed either in his own software or hardware world.

So friends both host and guests should have a good communicative relationship so that it will give a good foundation to the future  generations.This will enhance their social behaviour so that they can adapt with everybody and at all instances.

I have put some thoughts which came to me ,hope all of us  treat a guest as :

ATHITHI DEVO BHAVA.

Thanks for your time ,have a great weekend ahead.