How I Found the True Meaning of Prayer

My earliest memories of prayer come from two places. My home and the convent school that I attended. The former was where it was formalized. The latter revealed to me that there were different ways to pray. One could pray in English, by kneeling and to a God called Jesus too.

Like in most orthodox Indian homes, we were introduced to God (Swamy as we referred to him) very early, when we were just toddlers who could put their hands together in a Namaste.

Then He was described to us as someone who must be remembered twice a day—in the morning and evening. We were given to understand that God was essentially the giver and punisher. The second attribute is what made us submit to our mother’s everyday coercions and imparted the idea of a ‘God-fearing’ person in me. The fear campaign about God ranged from ‘Do this or else’ to ‘If you err, He will..’

However, the larger meaning of prayer as we understood then was 'making entreaties to the He who had everything at His disposal'. It meant asking for everything from wisdom to long life to wealth to strength to courage to success to sundry things that I didn’t even know existed in the world at that time. He was the one with a fathomless goody bag. My mother had no role in firming that belief in me. She merely asked us to pray and seek. Seek what, no one told me, and I thought it meant the things we craved for as human beings. Small things and big.

From the time we could talk, we were trained to chant verses both in the morning and evening before a wall plastered with God pictures. Somewhere at the bottom of the huge array was a lamp that my mother said was the embodiment of the Almighty. I was so fascinated by that insight that I hold it dear even today.

Every day, at six in the evening, my sister and I would be hounded to the prayer room.

‘Wash your hands and feet and bow before God and say slokas,’ amma would instruct with a prompt.

We were literally forced to chant the mantras taught in a particular sequence. So entrenched are they in my memory that I can rattle them off in a trice in the same order even now. Although it wasn’t among my favourite activities, the ritual was one that I couldn’t bypass no matter what, and so I went through the motions, mostly with great disinterest. I remember even faking a headache or some such at that hour a few times to evade the tedium of it all. But then again, you couldn’t be in bed at twilight; it would invite the wrath of God and bring misfortunes of the gravest kind. So, get up, plant yourself in front of the God pictures and chant aloud, amma would firmly say.

Once the ritual at home was completed, we had to march to the temple to witness the aarti. Believe me or not, we (my sister and I) loved this unskippable routine. It was our little daily outing, unsupervised, and we enjoyed our time circling the peepal tree and loitering around a bit. There were chants prescribed for each deity in the temple which we duly fulfilled. None of what we recited made any literal sense to us, but we went through the motions, neither questioning nor violating the protocols.

At some point in time, as I grew up, the thought that God is our protector, above all else, took primacy in my heart. He is our ‘go to’ person. The umbrella in times of rain. The answerer in times of tests. The curer in times of illness. The handyman who fixed all problems—from leaky eyes to flaking hearts to broken lives. Prayer, I concluded, meant seeking the two things that dispelled fear from life—protection and security.

Help us. Protect us. Save us. These three supplications encapsulated all my acts of prayer.

The playful temple trips of childhood became sacrosanct journeys in adulthood, and I visited holy shrines to drop petitions, to reinforce my piety, and in some cases, just to soak in the ambience. The atmosphere in some places of worship were undeniably comforting to the mind. The sounds, scents and sometimes even the silence that pervaded those precincts have all had a powerful bearing on me.

But then again, our belief systems aren’t permanent. They keep changing with life experiences and exposure to the good and the bad. The exposure depends on how aligned we want to be with life and its vagaries. We attract and repel as per our consciousness. We bloom or wither based on how much light we allow into our inner space.

Pace by pace, as I lived out my life, prayer began to take a non-verbal form. It began to lose its open and obvious nature. It became subtler and started pervading every aspect of my life, infusing power into each thought, word and deed of mine.

I realised that didn’t have to go to the shrine to feel the sacredness of the Supreme. Watching the sunset from my balcony or inhaling the freshness of the hills or traipsing by the sea brought the same experience to me and I would sink into a sacrosanct moment unawares.

Eventually, I didn’t need to read verses from religious texts to get a sense of devotion. Even singing a Bollywood song could give me the same spiritual gratification. All I had to do to feel a sense of communion was to render it soulfully as if I were singing a traditional hymn.

When I wrote, I felt I was praying.

When I cooked, I felt I was praying.

When I taught, I felt I was praying.

When I slept, I felt I was praying.

When I laughed, I felt I was praying.

When I fretted or fumed, I felt I was praying.

When I breathed, I felt I was praying.

Anything I did, I knew I was doing in the presence of and with the permission of what I once thought existed only in shrines and puja rooms.

All of the Universe was now God. And every minute vibration in it, was a Divine manifestation that I couldn’t miss.

Prayer wasn’t a verb, a doing thing, anymore. It was a state in which I remained encased day and night. Like the foetus in the amniotic sac.

It became the source and vital force of all my actions. There was nothing to do except letting it act, and as it did, be acutely aware of its action every passing moment. My joys, depressions, hopes, fears, anxieties, victories, setbacks, and my very existence were now anchored in that state. My turbulences and tranquilities were all consigned to it. I feel a quiver in my heart and a sting in my eyes as I write these words.

I still light a lamp at the altar in our house. It reminds me of my mother and of what she had taught me: that a lamp was the embodiment of the Divine. I still burn incense twice a day. The fragrance they spread in our house reminds me of my father. It makes me nostalgic of my days spent with them. Together they take me back to my roots. They piece together memories of my childhood and a past from where I travelled this far. The phrase 'Hare Krishna’ is still a part of my regular vocabulary, but it now serves as an umbilical cord that tethers me to my ultimate source.

One of my greatest learnings in life, probably, has been to know the difference between praying and being in a state of prayer. This knowledge will be my sheet anchor in both my happy and not-so-happy times. It will be my landing pad when I do well or worse. For this, I am ever grateful to That which made it happen. Call it God or what you will.

Flight of a Foreign Bird (Personal Essay)

When does a fledgling become a bird? When it leaves the nest.

That’s when the young one realizes what strength lies wrapped in her wings and how far she can fly if she ventures to leave the safe confines. It’s a flight of faith, which I took, in the year 1991.

Fresh out of college, with a dream that few dared to have in that time, I stepped out of home for the first time. To the university of Kerala to do my Masters in Journalism.

The university was in my home state only, just an overnight journey away, but to my parents it must have felt like the other end of the planet. Trust people around to make things worse with their remarks that are coated in concern but are intended to prick.

How much guts it took for my parents to cut through their snide statements and allow me to fly, I have no clue, but it must have taken oodles of heart for my mother to see me off at the railway station that wet evening. Even in the midst of my eagerness to break out of the cocoon and explore the world, I didn’t miss to see the rising tide in my mother’s eyes. It was hard for me to believe that mothers cried when their daughters went out to learn, that too not far from their vicinity. I had stupidly thought that tearful farewells were a tradition reserved for scenes after their wedding.

But no.

I learnt a few new things about motherhood that evening as the train pulled out of the platform and I watched my parents wave till the train curved its course.

The heart of a mother aches every time the child steps out and leaves her protected precincts; it beats hard in secret fear about her wellness and safety even if it meant staying out of sight for an hour; it felt empty until she heard the flap of the young wings back at the doorstep.

After that first time, I don’t remember seeing my mother’s moistened eyes many times at the see-off. She kept an unmistakably stoic exterior. She had probably reconciled to the indomitable reality of life.

Children leave.

Parents retire.

Distances become elastic.

Time and space define relationships. To be tossed by these shifting currents is not the mark of a mature mind.

Perhaps, she was steeling herself up for the inevitable - the day of my marriage when my exit from their lives will be formally complete.

The 90s were a time when I meandered through the rough and tumbles of life before I was finally docked in matrimony in 1998. The moment of farewells returned, but the roles reversed this time.

As I left for a foreign country with a man I barely knew in the few days of marriage, I felt a sharp tug at my heart that came from a sudden realization about the void that would soon set into in my parents’ life. It was a profound realization. For the first time it struck me that I wouldn’t probably miss them half as much as they would miss me. I was embarking on a new journey, with so much to look forward to, but what was I leaving them with?

I am not sure why this thought hadn’t occurred to me in the many departures before my first flight to the Gulf.

In the months that followed, I wept bitterly in my new home thinking of their loneliness. I still remember the helpless look my husband wore as I melted down. He must have mistaken it as the emotions of a daughter missing her parents. For some reason, I didn't mind to clarify it.

I wondered how my parents must be getting on with the idea of me living so far that a letter took fifteen days to reach and we could speak only for a few minutes once in a week? What did they do in the interim? Feel my absence with thought and words? Or feel my presence with their spirit?

It is probably in that period that I installed the virtue of empathy deeply into my psyche and learnt to see life through other people's eyes.

Farewells at the airport were never the same after that.

Every time I left home, I would sag under the guilt of leaving my father and my mother behind to live my own life. It was absurd to think I was responsible for their loneliness, but there was no way I could shake it off. As the flight soared over the verdant landscape and swerved towards the Arabian sea, I thought of a pair of human beings who would return to an empty home again. I reckoned what will keep them ticking for a year now is reliving moments of my stay and looking forward to my next round of homecoming.

Year after year, I departed, saddled with a sadness that only increased with time, for they were growing old. Time was on the ebb for them. It was a foreboding thought that nagged my mind every time I bade them goodbye.

And then, one day in 2016, my father left. Without notice. He was relieved of his loneliness and of all that kept him tethered to this chimerical world, but it made my mother doubly alone and rudderless.

I could never decipher, not till date, if I mourned my father’s demise more or my mother’s solitude. The pain that I felt the day I left her behind as she fought her grief hasn’t subsided yet. It is a burden I will carry forever.

The pandemic and the shackles it has placed on our lives have only amplified that ache. It continues to fester silently in various parts of my soul. Sometimes it escapes the mental turf and manifests in my body as a quiet sniffle and a feeble shudder. And sometimes it projects itself as disconcerting dreams.

How queer and complex are human circumstances! The map of our lives is laid out here – in this desert land. We are like tumbleweeds. It is here that we make a living and willy nilly survive.

My mother, on the other hand, is a grand old oak that can’t be uprooted from where she stands.

Between us, there is a huge chasm of physical space that I try to bridge with the buttons on my smart gadgets. At least, now I don’t live in an age of fortnight-old letters and short calls from public booths. In a world of big woes, these are small consolations that keep me hopping, from one day to the next.

(Dedicated to all parents and children, of all ages, who are separated by the oddities of life. If my writings touch a chord, please share the link to anyone you think will like it. Thank you.)

Happiest Day of My Life (Short Story)

‘This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life,’ Nagesh thought as he waited for the Zoom meeting to begin.

As per his original plan, it was his night of home-coming.

Deciding to pack up for good after 25 years on the foreign shores had not been easy. But he had had enough.

Enough of scrubbing bathrooms and burnt vessels from dawn to dusk.

Enough of enduring the eccentricities of madams suffering from OCDs.

Enough of living cooped up in a ten-by-ten room where all he had for himself was a deck on a bunk bed infested with bugs.

Above all, he had had enough of living alone, away from all that he loved-

the mango orchards in December, the paddy fields in April, the river in spate during rains, his wife, his children, the celebrations, the camaraderie, the freedom.

He had finally decided to go back to them and had put his madams on notice two months ago. They were initially chagrined that their trusted house boy of several years was leaving, but they saw the logic in it. The man’s toil had run its course and he now had to live for himself. He had an undeniable right to it.

‘Has it started?’ Preeti madam asked from the kitchen. She had arranged for him to participate in the Zoom meeting on her laptop. The phone screen was small, and he had requested Preeti madam, the kindest woman he had worked for, to allow him to watch the event on her laptop.

He had logged in early in anticipation, imagining the buzzing atmosphere at home in his mind. Staying logged in gave him a sense of being there, personally supervising the proceedings even as he sat staring at the screen. He projected his thoughts on it, first picturing his daughter, Vanita, in her wedding finery. He had not liked the saree she had selected for the occasion, but had approved it only because she had desired it. Just as he had approved her choice of the groom. He had approved the alliance despite the huge difficulties it posed, only because she had desired it.

Nagesh was initially reluctant to give his consent to the proposal that in the view of many in his family was a windfall for someone like him. To begin with, the boy did not belong to the same village as him, although he was from the same caste. To Nagesh, sending his daughter away to another village was tantamount to sending her off to a distant land, and it evoked old memories of him leaving his parents to take up work in the Gulf.

It was only a minor concern to which he reconciled on his wife’s counselling. What blew the living daylights out of him was what came next.

‘They are demanding twenty lakhs,’ his wife said the day the boy’s family came for discussions.

Nagesh listened to her silently. He said he would think about it.

Preeti madam was livid when she heard about it the next day.

He shared all his personal concerns with her, not because she had solutions to them, but because she gave him a patient hearing, and in the end made him a cup of tea. It was enough for him to think that his problems would miraculously melt away sooner or later.

‘Are you planning to give it?’ she asked.

‘I must, madam.’

‘Do you know dowry is punishable by law?’

‘Not in our village. It is a norm there. I took it when I got married and I must give when I get my daughters married too.’

‘When will you all change?’ she asked. The exasperation in her voice faded as she changed her tone and challenged, ‘What if you don’t?’

Nagesh simpered before saying, ‘Then my daughter will remain unmarried.’

‘Oh, God!’ she exclaimed, thumping her forehead melodramatically. ‘She is only eighteen.

There’s no hurry. Speak to your daughter. Find another groom,’ she stressed.

‘That won’t help. Even if I find her a jobless bloke, I have to give him a few lakhs. And this boy runs his own shop in the town and his family is wealthy. He will keep her happy. She will live in luxury. It is worth it.’

‘Now, this doesn’t make sense. If they are wealthy, why must they take money from you?’

‘Because it's a custom that we can’t break. And we have all accepted it in our place.’

‘But what’s the guarantee that she will be happy?’ Preeti madam threw her hands up as she asked this.

‘Of course, there is no guarantee. I can only hope that she will be. If she is not, then I will bring her back, perhaps. I don’t know. It has never happened in our village, but if my daughter is not treated well, I will not keep her there.’

Preeti madam nodded approvingly. ‘That sounds good. But where do you plan to get the twenty lakhs?’

Nagesh saw a flash of consternation in her face. She was genuinely concerned, rather horrified, at the magnitude of the challenge facing Nagesh.

He did not know where the money would come from either. He took a few moments to make a quick mental calculation. He could sell part of his farming land, but that still would not add up. He would be short by a few lakhs. He could ask for a loan from the rich people whose bathrooms he scrubbed. Not that he expected all of them to give. But he could try asking. The rest could be coughed up by taking a loan from the financing company in his native town. Their interest rates were savage, but his choices were limited.

‘You don’t worry. I will find means to get her married honourably,’ he had assured his wife.

A plan was in place now. It was a plan that made sure that he spent the rest of his life scrubbing bathrooms.

‘Are you happy?’ he asked Vanita a day after the wedding was fixed.

She merely smiled as if to mean both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. She was happy for the lovely stride her life was taking, but she also knew she was depriving her father of his happiness. She was stopping him from making the dream of returning home come true. She was sentencing him to a lifetime of drudgery in the desert land.

‘Father, I am not happy,’ she said to him a week later. ‘I want you to come back and be with us.’

‘What’s gone wrong?’

‘I don’t want to get married at all. I will study and earn and take care of you two in your old age. Come back home, father. Be with us.’

Nagesh laughed at her juvenile suggestion. He knew that Vanita loved him enough to give up her life for his sake. But he was her father, and could he be any less in matters of sacrifice? He would leave no stone unturned to guarantee that she led a happy life. With the man she loved. Even if he didn’t belong to their village.

‘What then will happen to the man you claim to love?’ he asked her teasingly. ‘He will die of heart-break.’

‘Oh, what’s about men? They will always find new interests,’ Vanita said. Nagesh did not miss the pain in her voice as she mildly choked on those words. She was clearly split between her father and her love.

That night, his wife wept bitterly asking him if they would ever live together again.

‘We will,’ Nagesh said, not believing his own words.

The laptop screen had gone to sleep while he wallowed in his thoughts, and he had to call Preeti madam to wake it up again. It was almost time for the ceremony to begin.

Nagesh pulled his new shirt straight, imagining that people on the other side would also be watching him. He had to look respectable. Although the groom’s family knew he was only a domestic servant in Dubai, they were generous enough not to make a big deal of it. Twenty lakhs is something, after all.

The screen flickered and his teenage son appeared on the video. On Nagesh’s instruction, he slowly panned the camera across the wedding hall. Nagesh quickly surveyed the scene to make sure no compromise had been made in the arrangements despite the Covid restrictions.

The floral decorations were satisfactory, although he would have preferred less of marigold and more of jasmine and rose. The attendees, although less in number, comprised of the prominent members of the family and the village. The camera then zoomed in to focus on Vanita who was slowly walking into the arena, accompanied by close relatives.

‘Close up, close up,’ he said, impatiently.

She came closer to the camera and smiled at her father. The mask concealed most part of her smile, but Nagesh read it in her eyes. The glint in her kohl-lined eyes suggested impending tears, and Nagesh wished they did not spill while he watched.

‘How pretty she looks, Nagesh!’ Preeti madam exclaimed.

Nagesh nodded with pride, conceding to himself that the green saree was not so bad, after all. But he could see there was too much make-up on her face, and he pointed it to Preeti madam.

‘Nagesh, that’s how brides must look. Fully decked up. What do you know?’ Preeti madam snapped light-heartedly.

Nagesh’s wife came into view shortly and prompted Vanita to seek her father’s blessings.

‘Be happy always,’ he said, not knowing what else to say.

‘I wish you were here, father,’ Vanita said, holding back her tears.

‘Let the flight ban be lifted. And I will come as soon as I can. I will see you with your husband. You be happy in your new house. Don’t think of me.’

He asked his wife to kiss Vanita on her forehead on his behalf before she was led away to the mandap. At that point, he realized that his eyes had welled up. He looked away, not wanting Preeti madam to catch him crying.

‘It’s okay, Nagesh. I understand,’ said Preeti madam. ‘Let me get you some tea.’

From the kitchen, she called out and said, ‘Congratulations, Nagesh. It must be the happiest day of your life.’

Nagesh nodded, pulling the handkerchief out of his pocket, and wiping his face.

‘Yes, madam. It is the happiest day of my life’, he said as he watched the event of Vanita’s wedding unfold in front of him. It was the day he had planned to shift from the sand dunes to the monsoon-soaked soil of his village. The day he would have changed from a desert shrub to a succulent houseplant. The day he intended to give his life a fresh, new lease.

(Disclaimer: This story in no way supports the draconian custom of dowry. However, it must be noted that giving and taking of dowry is normalized in different segments of our society. This story only highlights its adamant presence in our country. This narrative is as close as one can get to reality. )