Knocking on God’s Door

It is the month of July. It has been raining continuously for the past ten days or so. Having nothing better to do I have been thinking. You know the kind of thoughts that come to you when it’s just pouring and pouring. Whenever the intensity of rain subsides, I rush to go out for a while but by the time I have gathered together my keys, bag, money, umbrella, rain shoes, it comes back in full force and I am again left alone with my thoughts, watching the rain and getting lost in myself. The skies seem to have opened up completely and I am left wondering whether we are in for another deluge. Didn’t the same thing happen on 26^th July 2005 when all the major arterial roads in the city turned into slithering rivers and life changed upside down for many? That day, too, the morning had been fine; it was only from afternoon that the pattern changed. Our thoughts too change with time and season.

 It is on such rainy days that you think of Rabindranath Tagore and God the most. Tagore you can understand because of his repertoire of songs on the season but why God? Yes, that is the time I hold my conversations with God- questioning Him, thanking Him, complaining to him and even rebuking Him. I have seen that I remember God most when I am alone or distressed, in a fix or anticipating trouble or after having landed myself in the biggest mess.

My earliest interaction with my God goes back to the school days. That scourge of life-examinations- is what brought us together. Before touching an elder’s feet for that mark of dahi on the forehead, a visit to the puja room was a must. Please God, see me through this time! Let all the known guestions come. Or even better- While I am writing, please make sure that everything comes to my mind and slowly makes its way to the answer sheets in a state of free flow! I will not ask you for anything more! But this camaraderie always lasted till the examination; once over, God and I parted ways till, probably, the next one or just before the results.

In our childhood, Basant Panchami , in Bengali homes, was not restricted to offering Puja to the Goddess of Learning.  To us it meant a host of other activities too-early morning bath, donning of a new set of clothes, preferably the yellow sari, and gathering up all the major text books, especially Maths and Physics in my case, and placing them at the feet of Goddess Saraswati. Purpose being –Please Mother Saraswati, please help me pass these subjects. By the Goddess’ infinite grace I managed to cross the two major hurdles. Interestingly, I truly appreciated these two subjects only when, much later, I read Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’; that the whole mechanics of war, its causes and progress, could be expressed and analysed in terms of Arithmetic, Algebra ,Calculus and the Laws of Physics ,by a man of letters, is unbelievable! Perhaps, God, if you had sent us a teacher who could similarly have unraveled the complexities of Maths and Physics to us through such analogies from life or even the other way round, these subjects would have been so much more relevant and interesting to students like me.

Coming back to the point, this ritual I still observe with my daughter. The only difference being that the size of her text books kept growing voluminous as Microbiology and Biochemistry, Pathology and Pharmacology slowly replaced the more compact NCERT school books as she moved from school to medical college. Worried that the little shelf, where the tiny terracotta Saraswati stood, would collapse under the weight of the medical books, I took to the same tricks that medical students resort to a few days before their final examination. I replaced Harrison’s Internal Medicine and Bailey and Love’s Surgery with Davidson’s Medicine and the Manipal  Manual of Surgery. My reasons were in principle the same as theirs-less voluminous and more compact. At least, that way my deities would not be left homeless in case the whole shelf came crashing down under their weight!

My mother’s puja room was very ‘cosmopolitan’ and consisted of a few shelves filled with tiny icons, framed pictures, stone lingas, statuettes of Gods and Goddesses  collected from all over India cutting across all religions. From a stone Shiv-ling to a picture of Shiv-Parvati, little statues and pictures of Ramakrishnadev-Sarada Ma and Vivekananda, a beautiful miniature of Mother Mary with Jesus in an ornate frame, a black Krishna Murti  from Dwarka,  a framed picture of the Golden Temple, a tiny brass statue of Gopal , Shirdi Sai Baba in a metallic frame, all found their way to her shelves. She worshipped all and believed in the power of all. My father, egged on by us, often made fun of her and her ‘cosmopolitan’ Gods. Fortunately, for me, on getting married I found that in my in-laws’ home, too, the situation was very similar and my mother-in-law worshipped an array of similar Gods and Goddesses. So that made life easier for me and now I have kind of inherited some of these statuettes, icons, pictures who have slowly made their way to the two glass shelves in my home.  I pray in my own way, nothing hard and fast about the rituals I observe.

From a Hindu home to a missionary school, the transition never bothered us in our childhood or youth. It was the same. We said all our prayers in chorus as a matter of routine. I can still recall that the only time we made a dash for the school chapel was during the exam season or whenever we were in some tight spot. Singing hymns or carols, committing to memory the sayings of Jesus or celebrating a Christian Saint’s Day never gave either us or our parents any reason for concern. They were as much a part of us as the annual Laxmi and Saraswati pujas at home. It surprises me that nearly half a century on, parents are going overboard if their children are made to learn a  piece of shloka or doha,  or even sing an anthem or a patriotic song, penned by some of the greatest minds, which say or have any association with anything outside their own religion. Honestly, it would do the children of today a world of good if they really read or learnt about something or somebody outside what is being infused into their system by the unputdownable coaching centres. How else will the children of today learn of tolerance if we fail to show them the way? Probably, old habits die hard but till date I still find solace in saying the “Our Father…..” every day.

From my own experiences, and let me put it clearly, they are absolutely my own personal views, I have observed that we remember God in our moments of fear, frustration and failure. On normal days when life is going smoothly we really do not turn to God. We remember Him only when the ride becomes rough, when there is loss or failure, when something is longed for or when we are at the altar of success. That is the time we remember Him, turn to Him, ask Him, beg Him with the promise of loyalty and faithfulness only to be whisked off the path at the slightest pretext. Perhaps, I should say ‘I’ and not ‘We’ since these are all my thoughts. When something good happens it is very natural to be thankful but I have seen that this gratitude is momentary; yet, when misfortune befalls us, my first thought is “Why me and not someone else?”  I guess that is what makes us human- this very frailty of ours. Misfortune sees us raving and ranting against the same God whom we were extolling and praising only a few days ago. I am reminded of Kabir who so aptly said:

Dukh mein simran sab kare, Sukh mein kare na koye;

Jo Sukh mein simran kare, Tau dukh kahe ko hoye.

(In anguish everyone prays to Him, in joy does none;

To one who prays in happiness, how can sorrow come)

During our visits to the various temples and other places of worship across the country, as a child with my parents, I saw my mother seeking God inside the shrine offering her prayers there, while my father preferred to admire the temples, the churches or the gurudwaras from outside.  While one sought God inside the shrines braving long queues and making offerings, the other sought Him in man’s architectural brilliance and artistic craftsmanship and also by interacting with those working hard in trying to maintain the cleanliness, sanctity and discipline at God’s place of abode.

I guess each one of us has the right to seek our Maker in our own way since He is everywhere but if, in the process , we do learn a little about other faiths or  cross paths unknown to us, we do not lose anything. Doing good and getting it right is what really matters at the end of the day and discovering and keeping alive that tiny bit of the infinite in each one of us is what we can teach our children to strive for. Finding God is left to each one of us -He comes to you whenever and in whatever form you seek him as Rabindranath Tagore put it in one his gems from Gitanjali :

When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.

DS