Belief
The first lessons I learnt to believe in were conditional on my good behaviour: If I left my footwear upside down, I’d quarrel with my brothers. If I tied a Rakhi on their wrists every Raksha Bandhan, they’d rescue me in times of trouble and keep me safe. Or they were improbable beliefs dependent on phenomena beyond my control: The new moon looked like my face, which is why my mother had to look at me and kiss my forehead as soon as she spotted the thin sliver in the sky.
The footwear was left diligently upright. True, there was no quarrel. But two are dead, one a stranger. So that belief is shot. The rakhis were sent each year to all corners of the world. Except I know now that we, brothers and sisters, have to each do the rescuing as well as be our own rescuers. That’s another belief fast fading away. The new moon continues to bloom in the sky, but now there is no one left to kiss my forehead. And I never did believe that my face looked like that crescent in the sky.
I could have believed in God. I almost did, for a time in my very early years. It’s an inviting and tantalising prospect: to hand over your hopes and dreams and thoughts to an obscure, erratic entity who may or may not listen to your prayers. But death intervened. It has a way of erasing lightly held beliefs. God was dispensed of along with skipping ropes and innocence.
However, there are simple, everyday things. Nothing that may influence the world or its future, no great philosophical truth in them, just my personal keys to living each day the best I can.
Birdsong on a silent morning. Just before the city hums to life. The greens and browns of my backyard, never bare, always changing, the trees I love.
The smell of rain hanging in the cool air. The grey monsoon sky and the crisp blue of a windy February morning. The ocean.
The hug, bristly, briefly and sleepily, of a 16 year old.
Music. All kinds. Shehnai and sitar and the heavy beat of drums and bass guitar. Ghazals and pop, heavy metal and disco and Bollywood. Classic rock. The effortless voice of Karen Carpenter. Kishore Kumar and RD, Dio and Freddie, Jagjit Singh and Kishori Amonkar. Lata and Asha. Tina and Sheena and Gloria. Armstrong’s trumpet and Blackmore’s guitar.
Old friends. The ones who remember you from nightmare days and dream like nights. Who know your pretence and artifice and hypocrisy. Who take you as you are and call you out on all of your bullshit. Your comrades of the heart and partners in crime.
The smell of onions and garlic and carrots roasting in the oven. Or bread baking. Or the taste of hot khichdi with a dollop of ghee. Three meals a day. A full pantry. So much to be grateful for.
The 8 am and 6 pm hug and kiss.
Like a cool breeze and a hot sun. Reassurance, relief, respite, reason for life.
A book so beautifully written that the urge to read faster and internalise it rages against the need to slow down, savour it, never let it end. A full book cupboard.
Increasingly, my cross stitch projects. A retreat into solitude. Each stitch is a breath. In it, is stitched a song or a curse. Each square a moment of unthought. Just the needle and me and the thread.
These are the things I still believe in. Some people go from a fearless youth to a frightened old age. My life went down the opposite track. I was frightened away from happiness early on. Now the fear has receded. The worst, I dare to believe, has come and gone. What need, then, of prayer and ritual? These were of little use when I was young and running scared. I’m older now, maybe not wiser. The simple things are enough to believe in. They make for an unremarkably happy life.