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One of the unexpected elements of my visit was the overt religiosity of almost everyone I encountered. The religious element is a non-sequitur in the Indian context, what was different was that some viewed my laxness as at best an aberration, at worst a sin. This was most pronounced in the succession of women who looked after my grandmother. Most did not boast anything but a rudimentary education which probably accounted for their beliefs, which admixed superstitions, rituals, gurus and a rudimentary philosophy of living. However, no domestic help I had ever had in India when I lived there had been so bold as to declare me godless or forced their beliefs on me. Certainly no one was like the woman who believed I had terminated her employment because I did not believe in God - I wouldn't like to think of my fate if I did live in her midst. Others declared fasting to be the solution to all my perceived ills, indeed all seemed to have a peculiar attachment to fasting though it wasn't clear to me what new dawn the act would bring. An eclipse was a calamitous occuring. Dreams were interpreted, my grandmother moved through all of them. And all were keen on caste as an indicator of their own social status. I did try to provide my own point of view but this was clearly pointless. Much as I enjoyed listening to them and admired their spirit and tenderness, it all left me a bit despondent.
In my own family, I felt myself plunged right back into the world I was brought up in. My father, much like my mother, had traversed a full arc from agnosticism to belief so the family altar was offered flowers every day and no day passed without the lighting of the lamps. The act of discarding papers on which gods were embossed or printed was fraught with anxiety, as it is in many Indian houses. My uncle was probably symptomatic of many of us in attempting to reconcile an education in science which taught us that planets were compositions of matter with the belief that they exercised an impact on day to day life. Yet, they were models of rationality (and indeed which of us is the purely rational being) compared to many others in whom I found a slavish devotion to brahminism, the categorisation of people and animals as unclean and a near complete adherence to the Hindu calendar, auspicious times and endless poojas. Most were part of a rising middle class and their children had done well but the belief system remained and was merely admixed with a new prosperity and superficial cosmopolitanism. Parts of the family took to chanting God's name in my grandmother's ears in the belief they were easing her passage into the next world. My grandmother, at heart a cheerful agnostic, parroted this for their satisfaction but never took God's name of her own accord. More warmly, more humanly she thought endlessly of those she had been intimate with in her life.
With so much religion around, so much fear of mis-stepping (that pooja not done, that forgotten rahu kalam time), "family problems" and sometimes just the sheer difficulty of getting around town, I found myself hailing roadside shrines, rashly promising coconuts to Gods, surreptitiously moving an ill placed God, lighting the evening lamp and the like. A confession - I don't eschew Hindu religious practice altogether. I employ it as and when it pleases me though never in accordance with any calendar. I have a cultural attachment to many aspects of the religion, they induce in me that warm feeling of nostalgia and beauty that all childhood memories do. Yet I cannot take it seriously. The offered coconut is a symbol of grace and humility but it will not change anything. The idol is richly symbolic of human hope and desire but is little else than clay and sometimes their multitudes in India fill me with an odd sense of unease (like New Zealand sheep they must outnumber people). As for the rest, the caste divisions, the superstitions, the gurus, the unquestioning religiosity, these I can do without. Neither do I wish to be disabused of my own beliefs. Hindus like to boast that
atheism is part of the religion but this is academic. The man who is
rational is surely in a minority (though he need not be alone - he too can form his own atheist caste and participate in the
Indian Matrimonial Bazaar).
Back in Sydney some equanimity has been restored. India is shaped by society, in our daily lives and indeed even in our idea of life we are as far removed from nature as possible. In contrast, in the simplicity of the barbecue, in its slavish devotion to sport, its mythology of sea and bush, this most
urbanised society is repeatedly called back to the elements. Its hard to imagine a multitude of gods here but its perfectly easy to envisage the natural cycle of life without the mythology of suffering, rebirth, tapasya and release. I am a person, the lone tree and the reef and they all coexist and then pass. I cannot ever call myself Australian but I am not sure if my bemusement on this visit is merely because I am an Indian imperceptibly shaped by the country I live in.
