My first employment after graduation was in a private college in Orissa where my uncle served as the Principal. He was known as a disciplinarian and a critical supervisor. The teachers and the staff were respectful to him but would not appreciate his strict observance to time and duty. After a thousand years of subjugation, India has hard time in adjusting to freedom. Gandhi taught that "laws were made to be broken". Some take it literally. The general disorganization in the country is due to this arbitrary declaration of freedom in any context. Dozing and arbitrary absence appear normal. My uncle's wedding was held jointly as an event with my upanayana ritual. This was the last family event presided by my grandfather before he passed away the following year. My aunt had lost her mother but had a very sweet father who was a physician. I loved their family. I stayed with my uncle and aunt for six months during my tour of employment in the college. He had a young family, the children were 5 and 3. We had great time together. Uncle was a civil servant as a college teacher. He moved through various colleges. He also was taking care of my aunt who was not keeping so well those days. Apparently it took many years for her to get completely cured. Lately she was getting spinal chord pains through bone weakness. The children studied well and have assumed high positions in corporate environment. The children are affectionate to their parents. I had thought of visiting the Mahalaxmi Temple to offer a prayer for my aunt. As an immigrant having stayed far away from my parents, I have learned that prayers are expression of our respect to the person we love. We pray in order to reduce our pain in living through stress and anxiety. I have heard that sick people pray for longer life, but such prayer would only be internal. To build inner strength to face a sickness or overcome an obstacle is a technique in life. Prayers help build the inner strength. Hindu prayers are associated with a worship service. Old Indians believed that the universe is run by animated forces, which can be called upon by chanting mantras. It is not clear if the forces live outside the body or inside the body. A mantra most likely activates the body in a certain way to be able to deal with the problem. A mantra chanting needs special training. One can hire a priest if one did not know the procedure. Hindu offering and worship are personal. While the faith stresses on understanding than the conduct of ritual, the priests have made it a case of job security. In temple of worship one can spend huge amounts of resources in appeasing the priests. I do not know the origin of this distortion, but the Brahmanical exclusivity is a prime cause of India's caste system. The system has integrated into Hindu religion degrading its cosmic appeal. Indians discovered pretty early in history that mind has a much bigger role in human well being than the human body. A healthy mind can heal sickness and prolong life. The mind picks up anxiety and stress quicker and affects the heart through brain function and blood flow. The early physicians recommended meditation as a passport to clear the mind of its tension. A tension-free mind lives in the present. It became the teaching of the Gita. The future builds on the present. So we must always try to keep the present clean. It makes sense to me. Practicing life as prescribed through the Gita is hard. People do patchwork therapy through prayers and worship. The latter is the only recourse when you want to help out another person. In strict cosmological terms such help is not physically transmissible but one may help develop mental determination in the other person to give him/her a lift. A focused mind can do miracles. Sometimes it does. Hindu religion of an omnipotent God has reduced itself to a multiplicity of anthropomorphic deities which have features and conduct themselves as supernatural human beings. Mahalaxmi is a Mother who gives food and resources. By default she nurtures our health. With the limitation of the deity, a further limitation of time squeezes in. Her grace is bestowed on the assembled devotees that she might "see" in a place of worship. This last assumption is the result of an imagination that the deity is limited with a mind and a mood as any human being and does her "service" when pleased.
The deities are offered worship at auspicious times determined by sky conditions and astrology. Such times can bring stampedes when throngs of people would attempt to enter the narrow confines of the temple to be "seen" by the deity. Massive human losses in stampedes are commonly reported from Hindu pilgrim centers. Islamic superstition of cleansing the evil by stoning a wall causes huge human losses through stampedes resulting from approaching the wall. Both Hindu and Islamic faith while declaring beautifully the cosmic nature of God nurture customs which have entered through cultural superstition.
I was stuck in a narrow entrance of climbing steps. Sunday is auspicious because it is a holiday. Half the eight feet wide step was used to go up and the other half to go down. Various old ladies had their wares displayed taking about two feet of space in the middle. Through the movement I estimated the forward dimension of the step as about three feet. Nine square feet of space were possibly occupied by twenty people. A little further up, a brass railing separated the space into two columns separating men and women. The women's side appeared as moving objects. The men's side appeared as a human wall sliding up.
Once you are on the step, there is no rescue plan. One has to be prepared with water to escape dehydration and one must cover one's head from the pinching raw heat. I might have witnessed such tight humanity while growing up, but this experience was new and strange. There could be the possibility of people collapsing in exhaustion. One collapse could cause total disruption and instability. The system was meant to fail. The old places of worship need full renovation to cater to huge increase in population.
The success or failure in climbing the steps is called luck in superstition vocabulary. My luck seemed favorable and I did manage to reach the top open foyer. Then one has to go through narrow paths guided by brass railings snaking towards the further narrow area where the deity could be "seen". I did. I offered my coconut and other goods to the priest but did not wait to receive them back. There was pressure of movement.
The Hindu religious shrines are built as cave-like structures. The assumption is that the deity "lives" in a primitive abode when the universe was dark. The assumption simulates the view of human birth mapping it to the birth of the universe. Such mapping is strongly contested by other religions. They replace it with their own mapping. Convenient correlation leads to debates in theology. People with various dresses gather to argue their own superiority. They engineer the destruction of others. They call it as religious edict.
We cannot impose our view on all. A sick person lacks the ability to reason. We have to give the person help to stand up and be healthy. Mothers give children special objects as keep-sake to act as protectors in danger. I have been given a set of cotton strings that I carry in memory of my grandfather. I was in the Temple to observe my cultural ritual for my aunt who had been sick. A prayer and worship service are expressions of focused conduct. A ritual when completed does bring cultural satisfaction to the individual. It is like food.
On my descent, I bought some more offerings from the store and made my own internal prayer. An immigrant is a lonely traveler. It is a rare privilege to be with one's family. Human life is short and limited. I kept the wish for my aunt in my heart.
