From the time I could reason, I disliked God. He seemed a rather unsavoury character.
I was ten years old. While on school holidays at our ancestral home in the tiny hamlet of Aliparamba in Kerala, Ammamma, my mothers’ mother, asked me – “do you want to come to the temple with me tomorrow morning”
“Of course!” I replied. I felt singled out for special favours.
“But you will have to wake up very early, it’s going to be dark and we must climb two steep hills to get to the Kota temple. We cannot be late. Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes,” I said in glee.
I loved temples.
Of God I knew little.
As we walked out to the gates of the house, we measured our steps in darkness. But the moment we had walked past the paddy fields, and started climbing the first hill, we were enveloped in the light of a magnificent canopy of stars. I was awestruck. I had seen nothing like this. Delhi had no stars, I thought. (1)
“Why are there so many stars in Aliparamba, Ammamma? And where do these stars go in the morning?”
“They do not go anywhere; they have been there forever and will always be there. It says so in the Puranas.”
I followed my grandmother to every temple that she wanted to visit. And she visited many those days. She said she was seeking the blessings of the gods and goddesses for the wellbeing of her son’s family. On that long walk up the two steep hills, she told me of her son, the son she lost.
“God took him away. It has been 6 years”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Despite her resolute steps up the narrow mountain path, I saw her for the first time, not as my smiling grandmother, but as a mother grieving her son.
Nimisham is the word she used.
The time between the blinks of an eye.
“Oru nimisham”.
One moment.
That is all it took for him to go.
Now I think of him Ella nimishavum”.
Every moment.
Her son died of a heart attack on the stone steps of the kolam – the water tank where I would go with her to bathe and swim during those languid summer months. During one of those walks to the kolam my grandmother told me the story of how Siva intervened to have his son Ganesha’s life restored by having an elephant’s head fixed on him after an astonishing mix up with his wife Parvati on the edge of a similar water tank.
My first thought was why then did God not do the same for her son- if he was all powerful, why had he simply not given him a new heart, just as he gave his own son a new head?
Was it possible that God was selfish?
I still loved temples.
God perhaps not so much.
I saw no connection between the two.
We reached the Kotta temple at dawn. Even as a child, I was moved by its tranquil serenity. and the magnificent view of the valley below. This was a simple temple that only those whofelt bound to the deity would make the arduous climb over the hills to get to. It was a little further afield at the Vazhengada temple, that my love affair with temples began.
It was there that I witnessed a Kalamezuthu(2) – I was fascinated by the colours, the concentration and dedication of the artists who took hours to make a single large drawing on the temple floor with nothing but coloured rice grains and their bare hands. And with wondrous incredulity I then witnessed a Vallichappad, an oracle man, stomping all over their painstaking handiwork, destroying in seconds what they had taken the whole day to create.
And it was at this temple that I watched my first Kathakali performance that bewitched me and piqued my keen interest in this ancient dance drama.
Climbing the two hills was tough on my little legs but the thrill of being up all night, wandering freely in the night market, the picnic under the night sky, and waiting for the curtain to fall was worth all the effort. The performances would start at 10 pm and would go on till dawn, but I would have succumbed to sleep much before that.
By the time I was awakened at dawn embarrassed and sleepy, Panikkar our farm foreman and my first Kathakali guide, would ask with good humour if I remembered anything at all. What I remembered was always hazy- a magical kaleidoscope of characters – Kings Queens Demons and Monkey kings. What was unforgettable, though, was the sight of Narasimhan making a grisly meal of the intestines of Hiranyakashipu, while the chenda drums beat to a magnificent crescendo(3). I certainly never ever slept through that!
God or no God
I was beguiled and terrified all at once.
Temples were fascinating.
Back home after the temple visit, I wanted to know more about this uncle that I had never known and of whom little was spoken of. Like a young detective, I walked the labyrinthine corridors and attics of our ancestral home – and discovered a few of his artifacts in various nooks and crannies. I realised they were where they were because my grandmother could neither let go of his things nor bear to look at them.
Among the things that fascinated me was a beautiful wooden tennis racket (that perhaps started my obsession with the game of tennis), a couple of pens – a beautiful black Parker, a glittering silver Sheaffer, an unusual leather wallet.
The most marvellous discovery was a treasure of books that made me look forward to every summer holiday so that I could read quietly for hours curled up in bed upstairs. The Moon and Sixpence, Of Human Bondage, The Razors Edge (Maugham seemed to be a favourite).
Then I chanced upon a weather-beaten copy of Why I am not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell(4). The uncle I had never known, a young professor of Physics at Palghat’s Victoria College, clearly had a scientific temperament – and I imagined that he passed that on to me.
When I was 15, I made the first of my many readings of this book that changed me for good.
“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. Fear is the basis of the whole thing- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat fear of death”
However, I could not quite agree with Russel. Despite God the omnipotent being deviant aberrant and callous and causing her unspeakable misery, my grandmother did not fear God. She loved God. She sought his blessings.
What kept her going despite the impossible cruelty of her irrational God were the temple rituals customs, traditions, and routines that eased her pain, gave her comfort, offered solace.
Throughout my youth, I read and reread this book and other works by Russell.
I was convinced by the basic premise of Russell’s argument – that Religion in its bare essence, is simply a means for unscrupulous priests and canny politicians to supress and manipulate the masses.
So, I gave up on God and Religion
But I still liked temples.
It gave my grandmother a reason to live.
But I also soon realised that like all Man’s worldly pursuits – love, fame, and fortune- in the eternal quest too, the journey was possibly a lot more rewarding than the destination.
There seemed to be so many possible journeys to our lives….
Without God, keeping what Religion teaches us as Alain de Botton tells us(5).
Without Religion as John Lennon asked us to Imagine in the 60s(6)
With God without Religion as the Sufis delightfully tell us?(7)
With temples without God and remember Kabir’s wise teachings?(8)
Or
We could live in the happy delusion of faith to make this world bearable(9).
Perhaps, best of all, we could simply surrender to the blissful bewilderment of seeking the unattainable, as beautifully expressed in these two poems?
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Ek shaahid-e-maani-o-soorat ke
Milne ki tamanna sab ko hai
Main uske na milne par hoon fida
Lekin yeh mazaak-e-aam nahin
Everyone yearns to meet him,
Who gives form and meaning,
I am happy to surrender to the not finding
Which is the ultimate blessing!(10)
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Kbhabare Tahayyur- e- Ishq Sun
Na Junoon raha na pari rahi
Na to tu raha na to mei raha
Jo rahi to bekbhari rahi
Listen to this tale of love
The frenzy has gone and so has the beloved
Neither you remained nor I
What remained was just this bewilderment!(11)
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