After a long time, maybe after a year or so, I went to a
temple today. Living in Nanganallur meant that there was no difficulty ever in
seeking a temple to go to. The whole place looks as though a gigantic seasonal
cyclone carried half the temples from faraway lands and scattered them all in
this south Chennai neighbourhood. There are temples for gods, goddesses, animal
gods, avatars, gods that do not belong to this region, even for self-proclaimed
gods. Living in such a neighbourhood comes with its own life-style, with an
attached set of highs and lows. As school kids, the place that we would frequent
on a weekly, perhaps daily basis would be any of the handful of ice-cream shops
or juice shops (it’s a perpetual summer in Chennai, so no problem), and then
head out for the prasadams at any of the dozens of temples. With so many places
with free food, for all sections of the population, it was a sure guarantee to
find at least one temple which would serve rice or payasam at any time of the
day. Temples were not places to go to with friends; they were also the perfect
places to meet teachers and parents of classmates. Thus, the outcome of such unplanned
meetings was that while one compared servings of prasadams or comparing dresses
(it was a rare occasion indeed to see you school friends out of uniform!!!), the
elders would be comparing grades and marks and conducting a clandestine, informal
parents-teachers meeting and assessing class performance (a truly undivine
subject) and thus providing enough fuel to be combusted on the walk back home.
The temples were not only places that played host to such
meetings and places were broad-hearted persons handed out free food, but also
they were the cultural highpoints of the neighbourhood. Dance recitals, carnatic
music katcheris all played out in a medlay in tha evenings, especially in
margazhi (almost covering December), when maamis would go out in their
madisaars and maamas looking so handsome in their evenings veshtis and loose
shirts (and possibly, I imagine, after a very strong, sugarless filter coffee). Veenas, violins, singing would be all around;
ragas and keerthanas floated around, if they were not attending or bloating
about tickets to a concert in Mylapore or at the Music Academy, they were commenting
on the TV performance of an artiste. And the temples would contribute to the
overall excited atmosphere by the putting their own itinerary of events, often
competing with each other for famous performers and the best time slots. It was
as though a thick cloud of thaalas and swaras settled on the neighbourhood.
And then there is navrathri. Now, I know that my Calcutta
friends are going to jealously guard their Durga Puja. I totally think that
it’s entirely justified. Thus, while Calcutta rejoices in their pandals and
Durgas, Chennai has her golus- racks upon racks of clay dolls, humans and gods,
gods engaging in human activities and even little parks out of sprouts, tiny
plastic benches and serial lights. Little kids (and not so little ones too) go
around with their mothers, visiting friends and singing songs and smilingly
accepting the little gifts and snacks that they got in return. The temples also
had their own golu racks, in some cases, putting the domestic ones to envy.
Amongst all these memories, I went to the famous Anjeneya
temple of Nanganallur today. As a teenager growing up here, the temple was a
focal point in my life, geographically as well as spiritually. It was hard to
ignore the influence of the monkey god in my very existence, fasts on Saturdays,
once even followed by a bout of extreme vegetarianism. There were daily visits
to the temple, 21 rounds around the deity and chanting of mantras for him. And
then there was the agnostic phase, brought about due to the combined influences
of an extremely rational college teacher and Bertrand Russel. And not to ignore
the influence of my Marxist uncle and friends. All of Hanuman’s photos and
kumkums found their way out of my life and into my mother’s purses and handbags.
Money began to be spent more on eating outside and less on bus fares to
temples. What followed were arguments at home regarding my ‘tettaiya vazhi’ (wrong path). To quell
the fights and lectures, I would go to temples, look at the statues with
suspicion and questions. I looked for possible explanations of religion, and to
find an anchor in my life. And I thought that anchor was love. When people
wrote or spoke about god giving them direction in life, I replaced the word
‘god’ with ‘love’ and found that it made absolute sense. A love for the whole
world and the beauty in it, love for the people in my life and for the ones not
in it, for the sea and the hills and the plains, a love for books that I read and
tissue papers where I wrote my four lined verses. I found that I should be worshipping
them, and not someone whose existence and intention I doubted. When people
spoke about praying, I thought about writing in my diary, I mean, isn’t that
what praying is about? Talking out so you can figure out things for yourself???
So after I embraced agnosticism, I ruled out prayer and any kind of spiritual
dealings from my life. Russell and Durkheim occupied my mind and I sought to
find out why people flocked to temples; why they would look for answers for
their existence in someone who they didn’t know even existed; why even they
were starving people often took long pilgrimages and gave away much of their
life’s savings to the service of gods, which more often than not stayed only
with the ‘gods’ and never dripped down to more needy humans. Religion and
belief found no more a place in a life dominated by staunch rationalism. The
various theories just kept me more vigilant as to how humans have allowed such
a vague power to control their lives.
And so the stages of spiritual explorations went on. Until
December 2013. At home for the vacations, one Sunday evening I decided to shoo
away my boredom by visiting the only place in my locality where social intercourse
takes place- temples. So I circumbulated an entire portion of my neighbourhood,
covering within it radius half a dozen temples. I started with the famous Hanuman
temple, where the 32 feet deity, with his palms folded and brought together at
his chest smiled warmly at me. Hundreds of people around me thronged to buy
ghee for the gigantic lamps and gave offerings of garlands of lotus flowers and
tulsi leaves, and coconuts with their husks intact. The whole place smelt of
ghee and fresh leaves and smoke. Sweaty priests handed out sacred water tasting
of camphor to the devotees, and blessed them. Old couples made way for young
couples who looked as though they were on the way from their software firms to their
posh apartments, smelling of new money. After all these myriad observations, I
finally found myself at the foot of the most loyal friend in Hindu mythology,
the monkey god, adorning a garland of vada, which ran across his (approximately
28 feet long) torso, a gigantic edible garland. I looked at the frail old
priest sitting on a wooden plank and gently swaying back and fro to the rhythm
of the shlokas he was reading off a tattered book. My mother gently nudged me
to close my eyes and pray, at least pretend to. And so I did that. I prayed. Like
the protagonist in Eat Pray Love, I prayed suddenly. But unlike her, I did not
pray on the bathroom floor, but in a Hindu temple saturated with devotion and faith
and rama bhajans.
It was as though I had awakened in me an art that was
completely forgotten for a long time. As I closed my eyes and started talking inside
my head, I felt a gentle presence inside of me, smiling as I spoke. Gently nodding
his-her head as I apologised for the long leave and taking my hand along as I spoke
about my life. He-she laughed as I spoke about the wishes that I had, what I wanted
and what was hoping for. When I opened my eyes, the silence in my head quickly
broke into a thousand noises. The crowds jostled around me, but I could feel
someone tugging my sleeves, desperately holding on to me, or was I the one who
did not let go of my hold on him-her? I had finally realised that praying was not
an act of holding a conversation with a person who one thought existed; it was
the act of looking deep inside and trusting that one’s feelings and wishes were
worthy of opening up. And I had done just that- I had opened up to someone
imaginary. When I was a kid, I grew up alone, with my share of imaginary friends,
without whom I would hold long conversations; I realised that conversing with
God was not much different. That he-she wasn’t anyone extra- powerful, not anyone
who constantly looked at me with his CCTV eyes and censuring me, not someone
who laid down the terms by which I would live, just someone I could always talk
to when I wanted to, and it stops there. No judgements, no punishments, no
rewards, nothing.
If that is what my god feels like, then maybe I’m neither an
atheist nor an agnostic anymore.
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