This piece was the 1st thing I ever wrote in 2020 when I first started to write. I added a little meat to it before adding it to the book but the bulk was written all at one go. For someone who had wanted to write but had never actually gotten to it, this one came easy because it came from the heart.
It seems crazy to me now, but as a child I voluntarily asked to be able to go to Sabarimala. My uncle used to go almost every year and I said I wanted to go as well. I didn’t even know which state it was in, yet I was on board. I was unaware then of all the vows that men make before going (no meat, no shaving, and no sex for a month and a half) or that a few years ago they had barred women from entering.
All I knew was it meant I could go barefoot to school a few weeks before I ended up going. Or so I thought. My mother, despite being religious, insisted I wear shoes even then because she pointed out I had been able to injure my feet even while wearing boots.
“How will people know I’m going then?”
“You wear that black scarf, that’s enough.”
With no meat and without this one solitary perk, my enthusiasm dulled a bit. It completely died by the time I was actually there. I don’t remember much apart from getting there by train with my uncle, a few of his friends and 12 other kids. We each had a cloth bundle that had to be carried, which I would later realise had enough coconuts and coins to be part of a plot in “Pirates of the Caribbean”. And to top it all off, you would have to join in chanting the god’s name if someone else started, which happened at the drop of a hat. Like when there was a break in your conversation or, when your food hadn’t arrived yet or when somebody had stopped to take a thorn out of their foot. Since then, I’ve noticed similar behaviour primarily in Manchester United fans. All of this culminated in a hurried minute inside the temple before a long journey back where everyone was enthusiastically planning for the next year. I mentally made a note to add this to my ‘one and done’ list.
Did I believe in god? I don’t know. I know I grew up in a religious house. Every undertaking or journey would usually require me to close my eyes and cup my hands before the gods in the house. Like before an exam. But I wasn’t like some of my classmates who showed up on the day we got our report cards like they were priests disguised as school students. It was almost like they had taken the vow to become monks but had absentmindedly caught the bus to school. Compared to them you could say I somewhat believed in god. It was something I took for granted like doing poorly in a Hindi exam. Inasmuch as I accepted that this was a universal truth and that most people felt more strongly about it than I did.
I was definitely invested in some aspects of the festivals we celebrated at home. The usual ones like Pongal (how many vadas can I fit in my mouth simultaneously) and Diwali. But also, Golu. It was meant to be a festival where a family would showcase different deities with lamps and bright lights. And families would come over to see the display and socialise as we ate snacks and sweets. From when I turned eight, this display grew to accommodate my own contribution.
“As you can see, on the left of this idol we have our GI Joe and Power Ranger section.”
But as time passed and I moved away from home after school, this reservoir of religious feelings steadily dissipated. Despite having enough reasons to maintain this connection, like failing every third subject in law school. Even at internships and once I started working where divine guidance would have been the only way to navigate some of the managers that I worked with. And then I feel like I just woke up one day and realised I wasn’t a believer anymore.
I think my move to Mumbai played a large part in this. Their approach to most things (especially festivals) was something that was completely new to me. My first few months, I was living the dream in Mumbai, staying rent free at a friend’s house. It was an apartment on the 11th floor in Andheri. About two weeks into staying there I almost peed myself when the windows began to rattle. Imagine a Hazard Level 3 storm, only if the sound of the storm went “Saree ke fall sa kabhi match kiya re”. On a walk the next day, I’d find out this sonic boom was coming from a shack with a speaker the size of the phone booth.
This was only a teaser for what was to come for when I was to move to my own place. After our host had moved back to Delhi, a close friend and I ended up finding a place in Santa Cruz East after a prolonged search.
“Do bachelor log? Ek Nepali aur ek Madrasi?? Try karte hain boss”
We found a small two-bedroom flat in a seven-storey building on the main road. The building was meant for bank employees after the bank had seized it from an errant builder. The apartment was small and a little basic and down the road from construction ahead which often meant a traffic jam right outside our house. But it wasn’t all bad. In the monsoon, our building was suddenly blessed with a swimming pool in the parking lot.
We were one of the few occupants in the building and the person we most interacted with was a grumpy old guard. A son of the soil who had very set views on what protecting the building meant and how our visitors were to conduct themselves.
Furniture delivery?
“Take the stairs! Lift is purely for Vaastu purposes.”
Sibling? Aunt? Mother?
“Thou shalt not pass.” *snores*
Random neighbourhood youth collecting money for a festival?
“Go forth my child! Live long and prosper.”
We had a steady stream of these guys who would bang on the door until it was answered. They usually looked like they were taking a break from auditioning for youth-who-suffers-from-road-rage commercials to come by and ask for money.
For Ganesh Chaturthi! For Dahi Handi! Second release from Salman Khan this year!
And the tone would flip from entitled to confrontational if it wasn’t received with enthusiasm.
“Hey, give money for the festival. Give dil se bro, everyone is giving.”
“I don’t want to-”
“And give happily…It’s for god.”
“I won’t, I don’t…believe in god?”
“WHAT. YOU DON’T BELI- ATLEAST GIVE ME A CIGARETTE THEN.”
Once he started smoking and muttering about how he had wasted time today by not working (“beating people up for money”), I figured I’d just pay up from the next time around. It was hard to give it “Dil Se” when you realised you were funding yourself staying awake until 2 a.m. due to loud bhajans like “Aaj blue hai pani pani pani”.
My parents were updated on my new beliefs in bits and pieces when we met. I even broke it to my grandmother one of the last times I visited Bangalore before moving back.
“Go and thank god for the news” she told me as she intently made a shopping list on the back of an old calendar. I gently explained that I wasn’t a believer as my body recovered from the massive lunch she had made me to celebrate my moving back to Bangalore for a new job. God was a big part of our memories. Be it me wandering off as a toddler at a Ram Leela while visiting her in Madhya Pradesh or some of the stories I was told as a child about Krishna and the other gods.
“You’ve become Nastik?”
“I think it’s just because of the lunch, I’ve actually lost a few kilo-”
“Nastik means atheist!”
This was a new addition to some of the changes in our relationship over the years. We shared a roof when I moved back to Bangalore. This meant more time together and opportunities to disagree with each other’s beliefs. But not in the way you’d think.
She had less to say about my godlessness than about my late hours. She got upset by my not eating curd and not by my dating someone who wasn’t Hindu. Although I conveniently ignored this when I used to joke to my friends about how she reacted to my new girlfriend:
“Paati I’m feeling unwell”
“Eat curds and go to sleep”
“Paati I had a bad day at work”
“Eat curds and go to sleep..”
“Paati I’m in love with a Muslim”
“EAT CURDS AND GO TO SLEEP.”
I first met Maliha a few months after moving back to Bangalore. We had met at a friend’s birthday party and had begun to date a month later. As I would tell people later, our meeting went so well she was inspired to leave the country. We were in the same city for six months when she met all my friends, my parents, and my grandmother. She then moved to the U.S. for her PhD and was there for the better part of four years. Through all of this, we had continued to stay together and even gotten engaged some months before she had to move back.
It was only when it was clear that I was going to be part of a mixed marriage that the topic of god came up again. Mali and I were obviously grateful that we were able to take this step sans drama. So grateful that we agreed to do a ceremony for each religion, a reception, and a party. It’s like the story of the camel and the trader. If you haven’t heard it before, a trader pitches a tent, and the camel asks to put his head in because it’s cold outside. The camel keeps putting more of himself in the tent with repeated “adjust maadi” requests until the trader is sleeping out in the cold.
Only our version had two camels and each camel required a different wardrobe, person to conduct the ceremony and menu for guests. This was an unprecedented undertaking for both our families and our stamina. My grand mom finally brought the god-angle up with me one evening, in the midst of one of a million wedding tasks.
“So, you still don’t believe in God is it?”
“Yes Paati. Sathvik.”
“That’s the food! It’s Nastik!”
“Yes, yes Nastik”
“Even now that you are getting married and have access to um...new gods”
“Yes, even then.”
“Good. Stay consistent.”
“Of course, Paati.”
“Good. Why so dull, you’re getting married!”
“I’m tired-”
“Eat curds and go to sleep.”