LIFE
The Day I Wondered If There’s A God
What has religion got to do with God?
Priam: “This is a gift. I think we should take it to the temple of Poseidon.”
Paris: “I think we should burn it.”
A courtier: “Burn it? My prince, it’s a gift to the gods!”
Thence entered the horse into Troy. The rest is history.
I watched Troy wide-eyed when I was 23.
The movie was released eight years earlier. But I hadn’t taken to Hollywood movies until much later. When I did, I drank from the firehose. I set myself daily goals for watching classic English movies. Starting with the IMDB Top 100 list, moving on to Academy Award winners, and then taking up movies that stood with Di Caprio — impressive but unlucky.
That’s where I found Troy.
Watching the Greek ships lining in front of the Trojan coastline gave me goosebumps. I disliked Paris and Helen, but Hector made my heart flutter. Watching Achilles have sex with the trojan priestess Briseis made me admire the progressiveness of the Greeks and Trojans. They allowed non-celibate women priestesses while we still argued about it.
But the movie did something to me that was lasting and irreversible. It made me discover my God.
I grew up piously in a Hindu household.
I prayed twice a day. I went to temples at any available chance. I believed the grades I received were more of God’s blessing than my own efforts. If prostrating 101 times a day made my God happy, I did it excitedly. If God demanded that I stay apart in a separate room during periods and isolate myself, I did it obediently.
It’s not just that I followed the rituals; I also knew how and why we followed them. I read the scriptures, even when there were a gazillion of them. I learned the shlokas in Vishnu Sahasranamam and Mahishasuramardini Stotram by heart and recited them musically, as if they were pop songs.
I was the model daughter that every traditional family would hope for.
We didn’t have a single omnipotent god. We had 330 million of those. They all lived harmoniously in our collective faith, and we followed colourful sets of rituals to please them all. They spoke to us in omens, which had different regional interpretations.
If the railway crossing was closed on our way to some mission, we interpreted it as a potential obstacle awaiting us. If a cat crossed our way when heading out, we were walking into danger. Cutting hair on Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday was all unpleasant to the gods.
I did have my feeble rebellious streaks, though.
Our religious occasions demanded different kinds of fasts or abstinence, similar to lent fasting. We had to give up food that was considered non-spiritual, like onions or garlic.
Some occasions were women-centric, like Thiruvathira or Savitri Nombu. Girls or single women prayed for a good husband. Married women prayed for the longevity of their current husbands. But only girls and women fasted on those days.
Some other occasions, like Avaniyavittom, were male-centric. Boys and men who wore the sacred thread had to undergo a day of penance atoning for the sins of the year. They then changed the thread and opened a fresh account of sins for the next year. However, instead of a fast, they had to abstain from food cooked outside the home, aka impurely, on that day.
Honestly, the abstinence didn’t matter much. A delicious feast awaited them at home, since it was a very important ceremony of the year.
However, as if to make a point, I started going out to restaurants on such days. If men didn’t have to fast with us on a day when we were praying for their longevity, why did I have to fast on a day when they were atoning for their own sins?
If I were praying for a good husband, was some guy praying for a good wife, aka me? I quickly heard a resounding no from the voids of eternity. Men didn’t pray for women.
So, during the first Savitri Nombu after my wedding, when I had to pray for my husband, I refused to partake in it.
I asked my in-laws, “Let’s say I prayed for my husband’s longevity, and he lived up to 100. And I died at 50 because no one prayed for my long life. Wouldn’t it be a shame if he had to spend 50 years alone? Wouldn’t it be better if none of us or both of us prayed?”
Since they had no counter to that argument, they requested that my husband pray for me. But all of us knew by then that the ritual was a sham. No one asked me to follow the ritual again.
We had similar gods to the Greeks and the Trojans: the sun, the moon, and the planets; the earth, fire, and other powers; the devas like the Olympians.
“Burn it? My prince, it’s a gift to the gods” - the gods, similar to mine, of the Trojans, who offered similar gifts as I did.
As I watched the horse conquer the fortress without a single drop of blood, I wondered, if that gift to Poseidon screwed the Trojans colossally over, if their unconditional faith in Apollo didn’t save them from their defeat, why would my gods be any different?
The question germinated a seed of doubt and curiosity in me. I learned about other philosophies and religions. I watched Power of Myth insatiably and marvelled at Campbell’s astute observation: We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what’s important.
Every religion starts off as a philosophy, attempting to answer the cosmic mysteries of life. Why are we here? Is there anything beyond here?
As philosophy morphs into religion, it gathers rules of social and moral conduct. To help us all absorb them, the religious teachings become parables. The myopic species that we are take the parables literally and follow the centuries-old moral rules to the letter.
What remains when we strip away the parables and the rules?
I believed in God. But stupidly, I equated God with rituals, rules, and religion. The triple Rs constantly erected walls that kept some outside. They strove incessantly to mark those who didn’t believe in the same god, belong to the same religion, or follow the same rules. Watching Troy made me wonder and realise how futile they all were.
Bit by bit, my mental walls withered away. My middle way of agnosticism teaches me that there is no single right or wrong.
I don’t know if there is a God. I don’t know if God is within us or apart from us. I don’t know if God is personal or universal. I don’t know if there’s a single God for all of us or if we all define our own gods.
But I believe in a godliness that recognises the sameness in every plant, animal, and human.
