spirituality and me

I’m not spiritual, though I can perhaps say that I am drawn to spirituality in my own strange way.

When I went for Vipassana for the first time, I remember being very excited to hear Goenkaji’s evening sermons. I would bungle through the day, barely able to do as he asked, unable to ‘experience’ for myself. And I would wait eagerly for the evenings, for the explanations that I knew were coming, that made so much sense to my rational mind.

Supriti had called when I was at the shivir. (My phone should not have been on, but the Reliance one was, for it was doubling up as an alarm clock. No one really called me at that number anymore, so I figured I wasn’t breaking any rules by having it on me. But Supriti called, and though I didn’t take her call, I messaged back, and broke a rule as a result.) Anyhow I called back on the 10^th day to explain my absence, and I remember telling her how overwhelming the experience had been. So much of what Goenkaji said was validation for views already held, if only intuitively. He gave words and made concepts out of half formed thoughts and beliefs that had been guiding life so far. And provided so much more new material to think about. It was wonderful!

I never really practised meditation however. Much as I have loved the two Vipassana shivirs that I attended, and I can safely say I gained much from them, it never really became a mainstay in my life. It’s not like I don’t see what it can do for me, it’s just that I lack the discipline, I suppose.

I don’t confuse religion with spirituality, and yet firmly believe that every religion must have once had a spiritual aspect, which has gotten distorted along the way. At any rate, it has been a long held wish to study different religious texts, at least those of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity to begin with, the idea being to go beyond the stories and understand the underlying concepts.

Along the way, I have visited different places of worship, and observed people’s customs, but more importantly their mannerisms and their ‘vibes’. And come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter which faith or philosophy they follow, truth and integrity is personal.

But that’s not what I had started to say… what I had really meant to say is that along the way I have visited very many places of worship/ meditation, to feel the vibes of the place for myself. From Buddhist temples and monastries in Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Japan, to Hindu temples in Puri, Calcutta and down South (and so many others all over the country!), to Jain temples in Khajuraho and Palitana, to the Bahai temple in New Delhi, to Igatpuri and the Global pagoda in Mumbai, to the Mother’s shrine in Pondicherry and dome in Auroville, to the synagogue in Jew town in Fort Kochi… and many more that I may not now remember. Could I include here the temple in Koovagam that eunuchs go to for their ceremonial marriage every year, or the temple complex so popular among the transsexual Jogappas of Karnataka?

What I have been most drawn to is silence and peace and love and compassion, wherever I have found it. Sometimes I have found it in places yes, but those places have very often not been places of ‘worship’. And sometimes I have found it in people. And those people have very often not been people of faith/ religion.

Am I stating the obvious?

Here I am reminded of Tagore. While attending rehearsals and discussions around Tagore’s writings (for Manav’s latest play- more on that in another post) I often came across these words: death, infinity, truth, beauty. My first reaction to ‘truth and beauty’ was to scoff at it. Especially since so much of what he wrote was addressed to a woman, undoubtedly a ‘beautiful’ woman- an idea that didn’t appeal to me. Not being beautiful myself, finding so much emphasis on beauty seemed highly unfair to me. This however was a very narrow view of beauty.

As I thought more about it, and tried to look for ‘truth and beauty’ around me, I realised it was everywhere, in everyone. It existed in moments. There are moments of truth and beauty, and they are often moments of absolute honesty, (and perhaps vulnerability…?)and they are everywhere… only the very evolved probably manage to have more in their lives than the rest of us who must experience them in their fleetingness.

Death. I lived in denial for a long time, arguing that Tagore did not experience ‘more than his share’. He lived at a time when families were large, and mortality was high. Everyone would have experienced death from an early age, it was Tagore’s response to it that made him what he was. While this is true theoretically, that still doesn’t take away from the depth of his feeling and the angst that he must have felt, which led to a most remarkable relationship with death, that would last a lifetime.

As I acknowledged my dishonesty in not giving the man his due, I realised something else. All my so-called spirituality, all my search, is eventually directed towards one thing: to make my peace with this thing called Death. All the strength that I attempt to build up in myself, is in preparation for that moment that I know is inevitable- when my parents will no longer be with me. That moment which I dread to even think about, which seems so impossible and so cruel, and yet will one day be real. That moment beyond which life will never be the same again, that moment when I will lose my anchor and my support.

The thought of that moment engulfs me in loneliness, how will I ever face it in reality?

The thought of that one moment brings in sharp relief the ordinariness and fakeness of my everyday life. And of the many frivolous emotions I waste precious time on everyday: guilt, envy, worthlessness, desire, anger…

This then- this love, and attachment to my parents, as mortal as mortal can be- this is my Achilles’ heel. Losing them would be the moment of my undoing. The moment which is unimaginable, beyond which is nothingness, a void, a black hole...

And I travel by the same trains, Part 2

A rant from a long time ago... written on January 26, 2009

H’s brother died today.
I don’t know H too well; he’s a part of the Grip team that I have been working with on the last two shoots. He’s a young boy, all of nineteen, quiet and unassuming. And forever smiling. Today I got to know that he had a younger brother, a brother he lost to a local train accident.
This is about as close as I have come yet to my fears being realized, and now I am angrier and more scared and helpless still. Why is it so? Why is human life so worthless in this country? How many deaths does it take for us to sit up and take notice? Why are small numbers over a period of time so easy to ignore?
It seems to be a pattern. Small offences are forgivable, it takes a big jolt for people to really react. It’s as if we become habituated to things, and learn to accept them, because we feel so powerless to do anything about them. So we react with anger and outrage to bomb blasts that kill hundreds in the same local trains that claim hundreds of lives per month anyway. Somehow these hundred deaths are worth reacting to, their stories worth telling, their families worth supporting, while the other nameless faceless ones who lose their lives in the simple act of leading a normal life on a normal day go unnoticed because its something we have got used to.
Let me try and understand this. I read the papers, mostly HT, and I listen to the news on TV occasionally. And then there is the internet; chain mails, and Facebook groups. There seems to be a lot of anger in the people, especially about the recent attack in Mumbai. And what is it exactly that people are reacting to… the deaths, and the lack of security, the inability of the establishment to deal with terrorism, and to react to emergency situations.
I would have imagined however that there would be curiosity about finding the root of the problem, or atleast a drive towards it. There is most certainly a rise in terrorism. There is also a rise in violence in general, and in the crime rate. There is a rise in intolerance, whether it is towards another human being, or an entire community. And there is a rise in the concept of instant gratification. It’s a reflection of the society and the times we are living in.
Inconveniencing people brings instant gratification. It disrupts their peace, and they react immediately and strongly. And killing near and dear ones is the greatest inconvenience one can cause. If you inconvenience a critical mass of people, you get a certain amount of reaction. A few years ago, a few AK 47s would have sufficed. Then came the bomb. Now its serial blasts. Every time however people got used to it, and the reaction diluted. So I guess the brains behind the terrorists had to get more and more creative about it. They had to keep increasing the critical mass. When serial blasts stopped eliciting the desired response, they decided a change of tactic was in order. Some bright fellow came up with the idea of a sustained attack that would last a long time, a siege, so to say, of a place where the wealthy and the noticeable hang out. November 26 was born.
What next? Serial blasts across the nation?
(I still think the most creative was 9/11. That was a stroke of genius. Or maybe it was obvious to a more disruptive mind than mine.)
And towards what cause? I’m not entirely clear…
There are several points I am trying to make here. The situation is so complex, and there is so much to react to, that it makes me incoherent. I hope I can be excused for it…
The first is the rise in intolerance. It didn’t come about overnight. Nor is it confined to a single act. Its around us everywhere. Its what our children are growing up watching and imbibing. It’s there on the roads when we don’t allow a car to overtake, or grab a parking space. It’s there when we make a run for a bus instead of standing in queues. It’s there when we bribe government officials to get our water connection ahead of people before us. It’s there, and every new generation will be more intolerant that the one preceding it if we don’t accept and address it soon.
The next (ironically) is acceptance. We have learnt to accept injustice, even crime. We have become quietly submissive to restrictions on our daily lives, than fight for our freedom and dignity. So it is than women are afraid to step out after dark in Delhi, or people in Mumbai won’t voice their dissent against the likes of the Shiv Sena or the MNS, or Mayawati in UP or Modi in Gujarat. The force we have to fight is either too large and obscure, or too powerful to fight against. The fight seems too long drawn out, and the rewards too elusive, besides the fight is itself as thankless as it is fraught with danger. Faced with such odds, it’s hardly surprising that people make the choice that they do.
The next is insensitivity. As long as something doesn’t affect us directly we ignore it, or don’t give it its due, until it grows so large that we can’t ignore it anymore. Take the case of the Kashmir problem, or the insurgency in the North east or the Maoist movement in many states.

H’s brother wasn’t the first to die in a local train related accident, nor will he be the last. Accidents will keep happening, and people will keep getting injured and dying, a few everyday, until we decide to do something about it.