In the quest of Godliness…
I do not really know how to pray. I do visit temples. I like the ambience and also fold hands in front of the deity, but I do not exactly say or ask or chant anything. I just stand and look and do what everybody else is doing.
Maybe that is a trait from my father’s side of the family. My dad and my uncles do not pray probably because of their leftist ideology. They just lurk around temples and religious places. Dad says he is enjoying the architectural marvel of the place or watching the footwear outside, but you won’t catch him entering one. Some of the ancient temples here are truly exquisite and worth paying a visit even if you aren’t all that devout.
My mother on the other hand is deeply religious but not a fanatic. She has her elaborate prayer sessions when visiting a temple and I wonder what her prayers encompass. My brother though extremely industrious always prayed for divine intervention as a student. He would have a few deities lined on his study table and my uncle always ribbed him about it. He would say, “You think if one of them doesn’t help you, the other will. You have your contingency deities in place.” Thanks to our Hindu religion and the many thousands of Gods and Goddesses that it comprises of.
My sis in law is a staunchly religious and so is my niece who tried to explain God and evolution to me as a little 6 year old. Very interesting theory she has and like all kids when you ask her “Where is God?” she points upwards only for her naivety to be contested by my dad. He had to burst her bubble of innocence by commenting. “When you travel up there, you will realize there is no God out there either.”
I recently visited a temple which is infested with rats. It is in fact called ‘The rat temple’. If you believe cleanliness is Godliness, the place seriously needs to pay some attention to the same. Those rats are nice and cute as long as you don’t catch plague or leptospirosis. Those are neither Mickey nor Jerry, only a serious health hazard. Even my otherwise pious mother ran out of the place chased by the nauseating stench emanating from there. I am allowed to criticize since it’s my religion, so save the judgement and clean up the place instead.
Just a few hundred kilometers from there was an other religious place, a non Hindu one which people from all over the world visit. The place is super crowded and in my experience pushing and jostling is the norm. So, unless you are trained in martial arts, a regular in a Mumbai local or a religious fanatic, the place is a pass. My excitement about visiting the place was pretty short lived.
When you wonder why celebrities have a separate queue in such places, it is not because they are special but because the general public just do not know how to behave. When it comes to religious places, you will know where on the evolutionary scale people belong depending on how they behave in a queue. It is some kind of a cultural conditioning that some of us Indians have. I do not know about other cultures. I don’t understand the whole purpose of standing in long queues to catch a glimpse of your deity and before you can finish your prayers, you are shoved aside to make space for the next person. A consequence of our ever swelling population.
As for me, I believe in the love and goodness of people. Maybe that is what is Godliness. I see God in the people who have been kind to me. I will always be grateful to them. That is my prayer.
