I need to know why?

Often times I take great pride in being a Hindu Brahmin. I am not sure why i am proud but the truth is I am. But then there are certain aspects of the religion and its rituals that sometimes make me detest it.

Take for instance this case, my grandmother passed away on Dec 1st this year. So we(my family) arent permitted to go to temples with a kodimaram(temple flag) for a year, we cant go to temples on hills for a year, cant undertake any big pooja for a year, have to pay the pandit who performed the last rights close to 50K for apparent dhanams(donations accompanied by a pooja) that he performed.

But I need to know why, why shouldnt i go to a temple. why should we perform the dhanams. The answers given by these pandits make no sense at all. For most of my questions their answer is "well not everything is supposed to be disclosed right".Well that aint a good enough reply. The dhanams are supposed to benefit my grandmom in her after life which sounds so ridiculous to me but whats more ridiculous is the pandits claim that our going to temple is bad for her in her afterlife. Gimme a break, if someone dies and goes to god , whats the best place to meet them god right, so why not go to a temple.

I sometimes so strongly feel that the biggest bane of my religion and perhaps most other religions is that people blindly follow them out of fear or faith and the fact that the religions dont care to answer the questions that start with a "why"

--Badri--