The rain taps on the windowsill carrying away the scent of 'breathe' from my hands as I sit in my new apartment, which is yet to be completed, and feel the urge to come back to words..
I was chatting with a very good friend of mine earlier this evening and she very casually mentioned how overtaxing Ramadan has been for here this time around because of the burden of studies and various other factors in her life and oddly enough, this caused a very odd reaction within me. I don't know if it was the news of blasts in Delhi yesterday or simply the reccurance of my insecurities once again. Growing up as a child, I had always questioned my religious identity, when I entered college I made an active effort to rearrange this jigsaw in my mind and took a dozen Hinduism classes in search of answers, and today when I sit to think what I've harnessed, all I see are many more questions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here trying to justify Islam or any other religion being an easier religion to decipher. But what I'm trying to identify is the root of discipline in Hinduism which I see so clearly in other faiths. Trying to break through the overwhelming numbers of deities and religious practices and beliefs and just attempting to understand what it is to be a Hindu. How can a religion be so open to interpretation that you can't even connect with it. How are the youth of today, who live in a justified world, supposed to blindly believe what their society has taught them to. And even if so, even if we agree to accept this faith that we have no alignment with, how are we expected to discipline our lives around it. I have always come to understand that religion and faith is an idea that should ground you, secure all the loose ends of your life by allowing youself to submit yourself into to something greater. For me, Hinduism has no faith that I can blindly believe and no disciplinary idea that I can acquaint myself with. If I wish, I can build faith in the apple tree outside my apartment that is giving home to a family of birds and giving shade to the grass below it. Or I can take that same faith and put all my energies to the idols that my mother wakes up to every morning. It's a challenge.. to understand where you can unleash your inhibitions. And that is why my opening line was about my friend and her Ramadan experience.. Because even if she is finding no religious connect with the act of fasting for a whole month, she is still disciplining her life around an idea and making conscious decisions to accommodate that idea and still continuing her solder her religious identity.
I just hope that when the day comes that I have to pass on my faith to my children, I can help them build a more secure understanding of their heritage.
