something to believe in

gods, friendships and fantasies

A silent prayer said before sleeping. A universal chant to make one’s life better, to ease suffering, for world peace. Prayers gone unheard, or perhaps heard only by me. And maybe that’s all that matters? 

When I was a child, my friend told me that God is everywhere, he sees everything you do and he’s always present. I wasn’t sure if this was comforting or disconcerting. Does he really see everything? Can he read my mind? Does he see me when I frown at my mother? Or when I throw my leftover daal in the bin? But there was some comfort to that as well. As a child, I was scared of most things. I was deathly afraid of the dark, loud noises would freak me out, and horror movies were my biggest foe. The same friend as earlier loved horror movies, as most 10 year olds in the mid-2000’s did. Our nightly sleepover routine was telling each other spooky stories while my toes would curl and my heart would be racing. But I was not one to admit defeat and confess fear. The night would end with us retiring to our sides of the bed and shutting our eyes. My friend used to say a prayer before she would sleep. She said she would do it every night, with full concentration and sincerity. I never heard what she was praying for, but I always wondered. Was it a prayer of gratitude? Or one of want? A prayer of thanks? Or remorse? 

In my house, God had many faces. We celebrated Holi, Eid, Ganesh Chaturti, Diwali and Christmas, not exclusively and all with the joy that comes with the festivities. Surrounded by an atheistic family, there would be a rare religious moment shared with my grandparents. My vision of God was a portrait of baby Krishna that used to hang in my living room, adjacent to it was an idol of Ganpati and sitting next to it was a mighty Buddha. Such was the amalgamation of cultures in my childhood home. God for me was always complex. A mosaic of literature, phrases such as “bhagwan tumhari raksha kare” (may God protect you), the lighting of a diya, my dada holding a string of beads and chanting mantras that he’s known all his life. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God, I just didn’t know who he/she was. A part of that can be blamed on my upbringing, or perhaps a rebellion in me. A need to be different, a refusal to be another brick in the wall, I was my own person and I wanted to remain so. My opinions were shaped by the world I belonged to and my steadfast, sometimes annoying personality. 

Religion was odd for me growing up. The creation of binaries, a pitting of us vs them and a strange sense of othering that I could never wrap my head around; these were the only things that I associated with religion. It’s funny because when I think about it, all scripture and ancient religions have always postured themselves as believers in goodness and letting in the light, be it divine or not. In my education about God and religion, I was primarily around atheists, who told me to respect every religion but did not believe in any one specifically. Possibly done in an attempt to maintain heterogeneity and in a rejection to the divisive politics they grew up around, I understand this vein of thinking. However, my discovery of religion happened through literature. I read the Ramayana, I scoured through different versions of the Mahabharata, I read verses of the Bible and acknowledged its presence in the literary canon. When I read, I discovered - that perhaps this is my own journey to make. Only I can decide whether I am religious or not, or how I decide to be that or if I am spiritual; what I believe in and which census that has to show up in. 

It would be exciting and a testament to your will power to have an unwavering faith in anything. Currently I do not have unwavering faith in anything, other than myself, and even that wavers.  There is a bravery in devoting yourself to an unknown figure, wholeheartedly, mind, body and soul. In remembering each and every word of scripture, there is a steadfastness that I'd like to inculcate in myself, there is a discipline in choosing the monotony of the same spiritual life every day. 

I have often wondered whether the existence of God in my life has made me less of a good person or less happy. Perhaps my sadness would go away if I had a mythical figure to rely on. I like the idea of having to surrender to something larger than life, a paradigm that nobody will ever be able to explain, of always knowing that you will never be them, that you can’t even try to. In your darkest times, it is your faith that gets you through. The most special thing is the ability to have hope, through it all. Even if it is grasping at straws and forcing a belief, it still is something magical. Hope is a magical thing. 

My paternal grandparents are religious. They pray twice a day, every day, they are pure vegetarians and every year on each of our birthdays, my grandmother holds something called a “Sundarkand” where she and her old lady friends come home and sing in their most screechy voices on a loud mike and recite stories from the Ramayana. It is an exciting albeit overstimulating place to be. Exciting because in my life I had never seen unity of this kind. It forms a feminine sisterhood, where God is the medium and the trigger too, where they sit unified, enjoying themselves, laughing, giggling, singing and performing, after which they go back to their homes and step into the roles of wife, mother and grandmother once again. But in that moment, they are little girls, with glee and joy, stepping out of their societal bounds, stepping into a world of love and light, of abandon and carefree excitement, all united by their unwavering love for a God they are in pursuit to meet. 

Perhaps that is what God is, a unifying feature in our lives, that brings us together, to once again go back into our childlike selves. To enjoy, to feel like there is a purpose. In a cut and dry late stage capitalist world, perhaps these are the little joys one must indulge themselves in. Foregoing any thought of logic and sense, to let yourself go, completely and wholly. There is something magical in that. 

I find God in most things; The wind blowing through the trees, a downpour that provides my city with a much needed cool, an orange sunset, the crinkle in my friend’s eyes when they laugh loudly, the clatter of feet rushing to tell me something quickly, a movie that makes me cry, a generous man holding the lift open. Something holy, something special, exists in every one of us. An energy is there to be harnessed, it just depends how you look at it. I often wonder, for somebody who was raised without an image of God, I sure do see them in practically everything.