Spirituality and Faith through Leisure: A Study of Two Cities in India

For a standard living leisure is essential for the human beings today. Social development requires both work and leisure in a balanced manner. Leisure is cultural in nature hence; different societies have different concepts and types of leisure. In this manner leisure has been structural to every society. Spirituality is an integral part of many societies. Spirituality comes under essentials of living conditions for human beings. In this paper I would like to analyze on how spirituality is a type of leisure activity, particularly among the city dwellers in India. 

       People in the cities have both a traditional conservative mind set as well as some have a rational modern mind sets. Most of the people have integrated these two types of mind sets for life style in general and leisure activity in particular. For the purpose of analysis for this paper two cities have been chosen: Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India and Berhampur in Odisha, India. It is really interesting to know that there is a great similarity between the cities: both are relatively traditional cities, in both the cities people are mostly ritually oriented. It means they get pleasure out of the rituals and for them going to temples is a leisure activity. In these manner temples, pilgrimages and rituals are linked with leisure.