Being a Hindu

The first time I ever thought about the idea of my religious identity was following a childhood incident. As is usual with children, I was in the questions-all-the-time phase. With an irresistible urge to shoot questions about each and everything I came across, I happened to read an Enid Blyton book for small children. I think it was Amelia Jane or some such book. I was fascinated by the name Jane and went running to my mother.

I complained to her saying that I was not named Jane or Elizabeth or Jessica or some other nice names like those but a rather (according to me) dull Indian name.

Then she said that only Christians were given such names and not Hindus like us. That was the very first time I was made aware of the fact that I was a Hindu! Of course being a Hindu meant celebrating one festival or the other every few weeks and going to a temple whenever my parents went (which was every week or once in a month according to the availability of free time).

My mother (as almost all the mothers in our country) took on the responsibility of keeping the family in the good books of various gods by observing fasts for the various Hindu deities on the days earmarked for them according to the Hindu rituals. (Whatever religious rituals the women of the household observe, the resulting good fortune is supposed to be distributed to all the members of the family!) But she was very nice in the sense that she never forced us to observe the various fasts but just invited us to join in offering the sweet and savouries, prepared to break the fast, to the gods. We would then polish them off!

As children, our religion meant that we had to take an early shower in the mornings and pray to the gods for a few minutes standing in front of the small puja shelf (shrine) where pictures of various deities were kept. Such a routine start gave us a fresh start to each day, all of us smelling nice and clothed in freshly washed dresses. I assumed that people from the other religions kept a different set of pictures of their gods in their homes and according to me, that was the only difference between the various religions!