When one is from a super conservative Hindu Iyer family your exposure to familial rituals and practices are a given. I was a rebel all my life be it in relationship or following rules. I have a natural resistance to rules. My mother, bless her soul, she made some tasks at home compulsory, which I am thankful for it now.
When I reached fourteen years of age, she made light the lamps in the evening and important festival days as compulsory. The exception being on my menstrual days.
She would have the lamp area ready with Kolam and oiled lamps, my duty was to light it, that’s all. I tried to resist the task by saying I would not settle just for lighting, that I wanted more. Hoping she will give up. Then, we began negotiating and I said I need to read some spiritual books.
I thought she would resist, but she is a better negotiator than I. She agreed after a pause not wanting me to get alert to her game. I asked her which scripture to read since I was losing grounds anyway. She picked youngest Uncle’s pocketbook Gita and gave it to me.
Though she randomly picked to stall any delay or demand for a brand-new scripture book to read to agree to the new rule. Both of us knew I was stalling. Then, I opened the little tattered cover booklet and found the scripture had three lines.
It had original Sanskrit text, its transliteration, and the English explanation. Now, I couldn’t refuse any more saying I didn’t know Sanskrit. She pointed that there is an English explanation. She asked me to read it daily.
So, there began my journey of reading the scripture. I thought I was rebelling, but I found on hindsight that some events in life is made so from some magical realm.
Since 1988, I have been reading scripture, meditating, creating new lamp set arrangement. My mother never stopped me from making new arrangement.
Slowly, in my 11th grade I took over designing kolam as well as setting lamps. She found that I tend to follow my paternal grandmother in the way I set the lamps on mandala designs.
Since after a break during my tenth class, I was in-charge of cleaning and doing mandala design on the Vasarkal or front yard, my mother suggested if I wish to draw kolam on floor of the pooja shelf. There on a new journey began.
So, I picked all those books that were collections of my Younger Uncle. Buchi chittappa as he was known was the last brother of my father, he had left behind his collection of scriptures in which he was interested as a young man. Among his collection was Adhyatma Ramayana.
As I kept reading, this version of the Ramayana every single day with exceptions, I found myself questioning my own understanding of my religion. I was filled with concepts, and it seemed so far away from my convent education.
But I never gave up learning from or reading these scriptures. Somewhere in 2014 I came across a channel called Epic. Now this channel dealt with everything Indian culture, the show Devalok with Devdutt Pattanaik (Chief Belief Officer) got my immediate attention.
During that year I began to fangirl follow his show minus social media following because only had a Nokia iPhone with no WhatsApp in it. I learnt so many things which I had wished my father and mother had told me.
Because I had not fully reconciled to the fact that Epics and Puranas were Godly Literature and revered. I had so many questions about them. Devdutt patiently answered those unvoiced question. For in conservative circles questioning them was considered sacrileges.
Devdutt would unveil those hidden meaning on my own understanding and imposed understanding that were fogging true learning. Though the minor Deities were not revered in our household, but we are great followers of Vishnu and Shiva, thus being a combo of Vaishnavism and Saivism.
Our family is more of a cusp of Vishnu and Shiva and our ritual marking on the male members of the family’s forehead was more like Vaishnavism, but it is called Keethunamam. So, though we are Iyers we follow Vishnu and Shiva, with prominence on Vishnu’s avatars.
Devdutt’s version of the Gita (My Gita) which was well illustrated and made all these years reading of the pocketbook Bhagavad Gita clearer to me. Because I never gave up searching for the Gita’s true meaning. I would watch all the spiritual talks from South Indian gurus.
Whether it was naamsankeerthanam, spiritual talks by great south Indian Vaishnava Gurus, I would keep listening in. I would listen to Solomon Papaiya daily Thirukural or Couplets by Thiruvaluvar explanation in Tamil a daily viewer for nearly four or five years in Sun TV early in the morning. I never really stopped learn even now.
The fact that all those put together hashed up learning led to the understanding of the world around me. Recently, I was listening to Devdutt Pattanaik’s Business Sutra a CNBC TV18 channel playlist.
When I watched the video Interview of Devdutt Pattanaik in Lit for Life event, he was marketing for his new book Business Sutra which was in the press. At the end of the session, southern mentality came through and a participant was close-minded in accepting the new perspective. I think I got and dig my version truth with lowered capital T.
Godrej DEi Lab Business Sutra had a longer version of the Business Sutra which kept the audience interaction alive and kicking. Midway, I had to stop to reflect on those thoughts which kind of explains Indian management across industries.
The scriptures that I read were just text in western interpretation but hearing an Indian voice interpretation of the scriptures gave me pause. I must thank my siblings for helping me to find my roots.
When I was in school the ideologies and practices were Christian with many fractions, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Quakers, and other groups which I learned in my First year of BA course subject “History of English Literature.” My exposure to Indian Epics and Puranas were the Amar Chitra Katha but that never stopped from reading outside of the comics.
So, the search to find out more about Hinduism, I turned to western authors’ view of Hinduism. Of course, I also read books by Indian Philosophers. Yet it took me 14 years to really get a perspective after college. When I was able to grapple the text, it made me realise that the learning cannot be rushed using a brainwashed insight.
I love objective view of life and events, but I never could reconcile that I was also emotionally living it. My objective onlookers critiquing me said I was subjective and not take it personally. Now where is it being personal about an event which hurt me or directly targeted me in a situation that was toxic.
My father’s way was to be silent, and my mother would verbally burst out. I could not accept both the ways and said to myself that I am in search of the route that would take me to a place where I can reconcile the difference of objective and subjective. That way I am not ashamed to say that few things in my life are subjective indeed that does not stop me from being professional.
Itinerant Storyteller 