About God and prayers

Navratrein are here. I don't know what is the concept behind the festivities , but the 9 day long pooja can really drive you nuts. Consider this .. I have a temple behind my house and there is a kirtan everyday in front of my house. The temple has the pujaari or someone reciting prayers on a mic attached to a speaker put up on the top of the temple .. and his voice isn't exactly like Anup Jalota (a famous aarti singer) .. but still he goes on with the bhajans , esp in the evening. Then there is this group of Aunties that gathers in the evenings to do Bhajan-kirtan .. reciting bhajans on the mic , with a dholak-chammach providing the beats. And that is absolute cacophony. Aunties with their shrill voice , performing pooja ... and since their are actually praying .. no one can go and tell them to shut up or to lower the volume at least. And I go absolutely crazy .. listening to 2 sources of noise at the same time .. interfering destructively in my ears. The place where I lived earlier , there people used to put up small tents which housed a cassete player and a large speaker (remember Hyderabad Blues ? Just like that ..) .. and that thing played aartis all night long. I hate these bhajan singing festivals. And I don't understand that why must these things be done on the microphone. You want to pray .. good .. you should .. pray at your place quietly .. or sing Bhajans in your house ... but not on the mic please. And I can't think of any other reason but a show-off. All this comes across as a show off to me. Why ring bells in the temple ? Do u think God is a little deaf ? Or you u need to draw his attention ... like a little child draws the attention of his mother by wailing ? Why sing bhajans on the microphone .. because God up there is not able to hear your calls from down here ? The only reason which I can think off is show-off. People want other people to see how devout they are. Is there some other reason for that ? Only a show off can drive people to do Jaagrans. And that is another thing I've never been able to understand. Does god listen to you more in the night. Why can't you pray in the day ? Is overnight singing equal to flooding the God's mailbox with request letters so that he realises you are really needy ? Why ?
Actually the whole concept of going to temples and praying seems wierd sometimes.I mean people spend valuable time and money trying to appease a stone idol in which they think resides their omnipresent god. Nothing wrong with that. People need to visualize their god .. but what is strange is the fact that .... God is omnipresent , but is 'more' omnipresent in the stone idols and around the temple , which is why everybody removes their shoes there , never speak one bad word when in 10 m radius of the temple , always put on a benevolent expression while in the temple and will try to bribe the stone god by offering money while the same people will actually do really awful things while they are not near the temple , because God's spy cameras and microphones are only fitted in and around the temple. And then , why try to appease the the god ? Has he got a really large ego that needs to be regularily fed by millions of mortals because they think that the thread of their lives is in his hands ? Then what good is such a god ? Praying to God is not bad ... it helps to strengthen your hope. Money donated for the upkeep of the temple isn't bad either .. but donating millions of rupees , like in a temple in South India (Which collects truck loads of booty every year) .. well that is kinda strange.Why not spend the same time and money trying to help a human being in distress ?
When I was a kid , my mother used to make me sit at all the poojas that took place in our house and I sat along and prayed to God almighty so that he may help me to get all that I wanted , or if I needed nothing then I would simply pray because my mother was praying .But my family was never very religious , except dadiji (My grandmother) , my father is a firm non-believer and my mother seldom goes to temples and we have never had a big pooja or a hawan or anything like that ... we only had a pooja on festivals like Diwali ,in which my mother used to sing the aarti and I used to stand closing my eyes , hands folded in prayer , waiting for the parsaad. Nobody forced their beliefs on me which allowed me to develop my own thought process in this matter ....
When I became 14 , like all teenagers , I guess I tried to be different from the crowd and started believing that God does not exist ... that it is only a hope that foolish people need , because it is one hope that is never going to fail them. I had so many heated arguments on this subject and well , it always ended in something like 'you go your way , I'll go mine' . But I never realized that though I never believed in God , I always sub-consciously believed in practical magic .... miracles that will happen that will save me from the current crisis , will help me pass the next exam and will help me in getting the girl I had a crush on. I didn't realise then that while I was running away from one God , I was submitting to the other , only difference was that I never prayed to the God I had invented but then I always thought about him. And it is only when I came to college that I started thinking on these lines and found that I had actually invented a source of eternal hope for myself.
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And one last thing .. Umm.. this post was only my views .... I may have hurt someone with what I have said. Well I am sorry if that is the case. It is just that sometimes all this becomes really unbearable.