Birth of an atheist

Born into a very orthodox and religious family, I was made to believe that God was an essential part of our lives. And every act of ours needs to follow set guidelines underlining this belief. When something good happened in my life, I thanked God for his magnanimity, and when misfortune befell me, I somehow found faults in myself which made me worthy of the ill luck. The hard work, the commitment and sacrifices which helped me achieve what I had, was never given a second thought. I was under the strong impression that God had done all this for me. My complete faith in God was fine when the going was good.

But all turned topsy-turvy when bad luck struck. I was forced to tread along a dark path in my life. But again my strong faith in God came to my rescue. I strongly believed that He had something special designed for me. And I believed that the misfortune I faced was just a precursor to something grand and beautiful reserved for me by God. I waited and waited for that grandness for years on end. Nothing happened. I gritted my teeth and bore all misfortunes, waiting for my God and his showering of blessings. They never came.

It was then that I went into a detailed analysis of my life. Whenever I was about to take a major decision in life, I turned to God for his consent. I always believed that He would guide me in case the decision I was about to take was wrong. I always took the silence as consent from God. But it turned out that all the decisions were wrong and God helped me never. The revelation came as a shock - as you sow, so shall you reap. Whatever we get to experience is purely the result of our acts. That includes our career, financial situation, family and even health. When you are true to your career, giving your full self into it, you will be successful in your career. A calculated and careful use of your financial resources will take you a long way and so will your family and health. Its durability and strength depends on what you do with them. You abuse your body, resorting to overindulgence and turn to God when something bad happens to you. God cannot help you. He is not a magician. You do what is necessary for your well-being, and you need no God to help you.

We have always been told that God is like our father. To him all of his creations are equal. If so why don’t we see any equality on earth? Why is one section of the society superior to the other? Why is one section of the society healthier than the other? Why doesn’t one section of the society have a good family, children, etc. while the other has? And why are innocent animals made to suffer the same way as human beings, if God is there to protect them?  

New information I gained on ancient aliens did little to alleviate my situation. I chanced upon a television programme about proofs from all over the world on the visits of aliens to earth so many millennia back. I became an ardent viewer of that programme and got greatly interested in the subject. Since many questions on the existence of God had already started gnawing at me, it was a timely enlightenment. The more I learnt about this theory, the more I was convinced that the Gods we call by different names are very possibly aliens, who are technically advanced and intelligent than humans many times over. If this is true, then these Gods are interested in only keeping the humanity alive. Our individual problems are ours to deal with - Which explains the discrepancies while meting out justice to all creatures on earth. 

I don’t know whether I am relieved by my new knowledge. Now when I have to face a difficult situation, I am suddenly reminded that I have to deal with it myself. It may be making me stronger and independent, but the realization that I don’t have an Almighty to submit myself to, believing strongly that that force will see me through the situation, is appalling. But I still pray to Him every day and every moment of my life (I strongly believe in the scientific connotations of ‘Ohm’ and Lord Shiva), knowing fully well that I am praying to myself. My God is within myself, as my inner strength, determination and everything Godly.

 

Loneliness of old age

Getting old is probably the worst that can happen to man. And maybe that is why it is his worst nightmare. Though thoughts of getting old and lonely is embedded deep in our mind always, we are never geared up to face the situation when it actually comes to that. For us all the bad things happen only to others. We like to think that our spouse will be with us always and our children will take good care of us. But that is not always so. And we tend to fall apart when the truth strikes. We feel more and more lonely when our spouse, friends and relatives die on us. And when we suddenly find that our social circle isn’t as big as it used to be. And to top it all, the fear of death nags you always.

Once during our vacation in Kerala, an incident occurred which made me sit up and think about this issue. We were staying with my sister and her husband who are both doctors. One morning when I woke up and came out of my room, I saw both of them discussing something, serious expressions on their faces. They are both generally jovial and so I knew something was wrong. They were talking about a patient. Seeing the questioning look on my face, my sister turned to me and said, “Our ammachi is at it again. She fell from her chair last night when she was about to rise after dinner and has multiple fractures on her leg. And it looks like she also banged her head. She has been taken to Pushpagiri”. I knew being taken to Pushpagiri Hospital was itself quite serious. No ordinary mortal would opt for Pushpagiri if the disease was manageable with a medical mission or general hospital.

I knew this ammachi was staying in a huge house, with no one to look after her. All her children were abroad, and they always called her to go stay with them, but stubborn as she was she refused every time. 

She had not been keeping well for the past so many years, in fact from as long as I knew her. The first attack on her came in the form of cancer. It affected her very badly. But then she managed to come out of it, maybe because she was quite young then. The next was a heart attack, from which she could not come out easily. She was in hospital for about a month and had to endure its repercussions for very long after that. And then this fall. The silver lining in the whole episode was her children, who threw aside all their busyness to be with her whenever she needed them. And I knew they would come rushing when they heard this news. And as usual they would try to persuade her to accompany them. But her sentiments towards her ancestral home and her surroundings would prevent her from yielding to that.

It is pathetic to see the sufferings of the old. It is during old age that they need their dear and near ones beside them. But it rarely happens that way. The phenomenon which we now call generation gap always play truant. The parents rarely are able to communicate with their children effectively. Many a time they are misunderstood for what they say or how they behave because of their concern for their children. And they are forced to withdraw into a cocoon. This loneliness is felt more when one of the couple is dead.

This reminds me of a couple who used to live next door when my husband and I were in Chennai. We used to call them thatha (grandfather) and paati (grandmother). The couple was very old and they were living happily with their daughter and family. Their granddaughter Kavita was a very good friend of ours. 

My husband and I used to watch thatha and paati when they went for their long evening walks. We could see them talking animatedly all along and they were in their own world. But they never shied away from the new generation. They used to participate in the family get-togethers and colony gatherings. And they always had their contributions.

They were always a pleasure to our eyes. And we used to wonder what would happen when one of them was no more. And we never liked to go into details, since the thought itself distressed us.

Then we had to come back to Kerala, and lost touch with them for many years. When we met Kavita almost 8 years later, thatha had died. And paati was all alone. She never wanted to leave Chennai, where possibly she had spent many of her happy days. But as Kavitha lived in Canada and wanted to take her mother along, she was not left with much choice.  Last heard paati is in Mumbai with her other children, possibly lost.

I have seen how lost my father was after my mother died. Even he insisted on staying alone in a house with only servants to take care of him. He never wanted to come stay with us permanently. Even when his health deteriorated, he never wanted to stay with anyone of us. But in the end my sister forcibly took him with her where he breathed his last. 

We always tend to forget that the sense of security and belonging the elderly need at old age can be provided only by the younger generation. And the smile a grandchild can bring to their lips is………..rejuvenation?

How long before we reach cannibalism?

At the time when more and more foreigners have started to preach and practice vegetarianism, more and more of us are turning flesh-eaters. Once I had a debate with a friend of mine on whether man has been created as a flesh-eater or not. I fought with him saying we were flesh-eaters and I showed him my canines. He argued that ours were not canines in the true sense of the word. But as more and more in the room joined him, I withdrew hesitantly. To be frank, I still don’t know whether I’m right or he is.

But all the doctors have unanimously declared that meat is harmful to our body. Our body does not need it. Our digestive system has been programmed to cater to only a vegetarian body. And by eating non-veg, we are taking a great risk. But over the generations, even our digestive system has undergone evolution, resigning to the fact that they are to work overtime.

Can’t blame the present generation or, for that matter, the one before that for turning non-vegetarians. You find more variety in non-veg food. My sister is a thoroughbred vegetarian, who, even after continuous persuasion from her husband and his family for years, couldn’t change ways. I see her distress when we all go out together to eat. We all freak out on the best available non-veg food, when she is forced to opt for a daal fry or a chilli gobi. Being a very poor eater, this doesn’t affect her much, though. And I’ve noticed the step motherly treatment of such restaurants towards vegetarian food. You go to any major city, it is inundated with international eat-outs – McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, the list is endless.

But like a friend of mine once said, “goodness of anything is relative. One person’s good is another’s bad”. This is very true in the case of food too. When my husband was in Dubai and me and children back home, every time he calls us up, the first question, invariably, would be, “What was for lunch and what is for dinner?” When I tell him the menu for the day, his reply generally comes in “wow”s or “slurp”s. And what I generally cook are rice and the usual accompaniments like sambar, rasam, pulisseri, aviyal, etc. And when we return the question to him, his answer will be, “a burger from Subway”, or “a pizza from Pizza Hut”, or “a chicken tikka biriyani from Mohammedikka’s shop”. This answer will soon be followed by a “yuck”. And our son always complains, “Acha is so lucky, he gets to eat all exotic food. Here I am bored stiff with the same stuff, day in and day out”. And another of his complaints is that my menu is so predictable. He says, “When it is sambar today, I know its gonna be aviyal tomorrow and rasam, the day after. Why can’t you be unpredictable once in a while?”  And my husband says, “It’s so nice to think of home, where you have a wonderful wife, lovely kids and sumptuous food. What more would a guy want in life”. This was what I meant when I said “relative”. And I try to instill in my son the fact that he is indeed lucky. I tell him, you have such a wide choice now, which gives you a chance to complain. When I was young, I never had much choice. Going out to eat was on rare occasions, mostly when we found ourselves outside home during lunch or dinner hours. And the hotels didn’t have much choice back then.

It was during one of these arguments that I got a chance to show him how lucky he was to get the type of food he eats now. My sister, her husband, I and my children were out shopping once. While returning, my sister and her husband decided to do a bit of extra shopping on their own. We opted to stay inside the car. It was raining cats and dogs. It was almost dinner time, and then the talk of what to eat sprang up between my son and me. One lead to another, and soon we were arguing. Suddenly I looked out of the window and saw this old man sitting on the sidewalk and trying to eat something out of a small packet he had with him. He was sitting under a parasol and it was raining all round him. And the walkway was crowded. But he was oblivious to all that, busy eating. He would have had great difficulty getting someone to part with that packet.  We could see pieces of roti falling off the sides of the packet. He didn’t need to think twice to take it from the ground and put it back. I looked at my son, and I could see he had suddenly become quiet. I had driven home my point.

But I was under no delusion that he would never again complain about his food.

Friendships are forever

There is a Jewish saying: ‘Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure’. This is so true. No amount of money can buy the safety and happiness the nearness of a friend can bring you. My friend says, many a time relatives are a burden since they are thrust upon us. But friends are our real assets, since we get to choose them.
This brings to my mind the story my father used to tell me of his two neighbours. Ammalu teacher and Kalyanikutty teacher who lived on opposite sides of a narrow canal. They went to school and college together, and when they started working, they got to teach in the same school. Mornings they meet up at the log which served as the bridge over the canal. They walked to school together, talking incessantly. They sat side by side and had lunch together. In the evening they went back home together. At the bridge they would bid good bye to each other and say: “We will continue tomorrow.” No one knew what they talked, but they never had a dearth for subjects.
The Almighty had indeed blessed them with this friendship. They both married from very close by and they started living as neighbours. Their routine went on without any hurdles, until they retired. When they retired one after the other, their homes became their meeting points. They were my father’s contemporaries. Once my father died, there was no way we could find out what happened to them, and how the relationship between their children were.
I had always found this a fascinating story. I can visualise the happiness and security their togetherness brought to them. They were there for each other always, which helped them tide over all adverse conditions, and gave that extra sweetness to all their happiness.
Good friends are hard to find nowadays. In this rat race towards trying to achieve the unachievable, we find little time to understand each other and develop strong friendships. Only a friend can bring smile to your face and bring cheer to your heart. And true to the saying, a faithful friend is indeed a treasure.

Rain, rain go away, and don't come another day

Rains have always enthralled me. My childhood memories are interspersed by the smell and colour of the rains. But back then, the monsoon rains never made surprise visits. The Northwest monsoons, what the malayalis call ‘edavappathi’ or ‘kaalavarsham’, made its appearance on June 1, every year. I found it amusing and surprising how the rains lashed down on us suddenly one fine day, when the sky was so cheerful and clear till the previous night. But that was always so. And we could plan our days well ahead, with the rains always keeping a routine. The southwest monsoons, or ‘thulavarsham’, came in October, creating a hullabaloo with its thunder and lightning.

And the rains were a beauty. I could sit in our balcony for hours together, gulping down its splendour. Our courtyard had an assortment of trees and flowering plants. The sound of the rains falling on them was music to my ears. And during nights, it was like a sweet lullaby, transporting me to another world.

Though the rains drenched me on the first day of school every year, and soaked my new uniform, shoes and bag, I used to look forward to its visits.  The new umbrella did little to stop the drops falling on me. But even that did not dampen my spirits.

I found my trip to school and college most enjoyable during monsoons, be it in the school bus or the public transport. Once inside, you could hear the clattering of rain drops on the roof of the bus. It then slowly streamed down the glass panes of the closed windows, dousing my mind and soul. Maybe even the other passengers shared my mood, for though claustrophobic and drenched, no one complained. There was always a silent understanding and enjoyment.

After marriage, I went to Chennai. There the rains had a different appearance, and it lacked the charm of the rains back home. It came only once a year, lashing out on the denizens, flooding and dirtying the whole city. I very well know my partisan thinking and that I am biased about Kerala. Though Chennai has a major place in my heart, it is only second to my feelings towards Kerala. Our (my husband’s and mine) trips to the office were an ordeal during monsoons. Every evening, my husband grumbled about his torments maneouvering his motorbike through knee-deep water. And my journey in the Chennai Transport bus was no less arduous. Caught in a bunch of loud-mouthed commuters, I felt like a fish out of water. Though I lived in Chennai for 12 years, I never came around to enjoying the rains there. 

Then I happened to have a brief stint in Kerala. And to my great chagrin, I realised that the rains there had lost its charm and I did not enjoy it anymore. It was no longer music to my ears. And it no longer put me to sleep in the night with its sweet lullaby. I didn’t have to go far in search of the reason. Our courtyards now boast of no trees or flowering plants. We have cut them to give way to development. I looked out of my balcony and saw stretches of rubber plantations. With its fragile trunk and high water consumption, rubber trees are more a curse to us than boon. At the slightest provocation, it breaks and falls on the nearby electric lines, disrupting power for days together. But the ever-increasing price of rubber is highly lucrative, and we are ready to forego everything else. Once the monsoon sets in, and storm and heavy rainfall become the order of the day, we fall in perpetual darkness.

When this became a regular affair, the rebel in me awoke. Once when I had to bear this for two continuous days, I decided to call up the Electricity Board for an explanation. I asked the guy who picked up the phone, “Why is it that though metros like Mumbai and Chennai have their share of showers annually, they don’t face power cuts?” Pat came the reply, “because there are no rubber trees there”.