It's the crack of dawn and I've been up all night reading the Taqwacores. I'm not very good at writing about books but I'm not sleepy despite my bloodshot eyes and reading it all I could think of was how I wish I had faith in something.Because all the characters are struggling, between the path laid for them and their own expressions of something they just feel, believe and embody, something that goes beyond "I' and is bigger than anything anyone can say or write or force upon you - but they always have a belief, one that that belongs to them, rather than the other way around.
I only believe in god when I'm in trouble. I pray to my own guilty conscience, or send messages to the IF when things go FUBAR. That sincerity, however is never for myself.
I grew up with a mother who gave me Osho books and Old Path White Clouds to read when I was 10, who put on 'Sacred Chants of the Buddha' some afternoons in our one room apartment and we'd both SWAY, just for the fuck of it. The only tapes we'd listen to on our 8 hours journeys to the hills were Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen. I was dressed up as Shiva or Krishna on random days when she felt like it and one of my only memories of my grandfather is him folding his hands to me (on one of his last days) dressed like Krishna perched on a stool doing something cute. My dad follows the Gita with less of a philosophers sense of awe at the creator's Maya but a soldier's sense of duty and dharma. Ram and the Army are touchy subjects at my house, prone to inciting loud drunken, polarizing debates on weekends. And if us siblings are suspected of having snuck some beef curry, our beered up sentimental mother yells "Tumne apni MA ko khaya hai" at us.
Our family artis once a year on Diwali are famous disasters, out of sync, out of tune, fumbling with the words my brother and I, waiting to go pop open the beers and patakas. My brother feels some of the angst of living in a foreign land among the hostile, ignorant, benevolently confused or simply aloof strangers and gets defensive of his culture. He is a seeker, despite being a nastik like me, despite knowing the molecules that make up our bodies.
Unlike the characters of the book, I've never had a path laid down for me, or been told what is haraam or halal. The only one questioning the basis of me is me alone, though I may be equally lost in the greater quests for paths and labels.
I've never tried to seek spiritual fruits. All my journeys inwards have been simple self conscious nitpicking, so I envy them their ultimate goal of fana.
The sun hasn't risen yet but the orange lights at the UFO institute have made way for him. I pull my blinds down slowly, the birds are awake now. A few hours ago, in the early inky blue A.M, I was on the swing taking a break to rest my eyes that stung with the heat. I shut my eyes and just let the swing rock on its own with the wind and felt like I was swinging free, suspended in mid air, maybe it was because I had barely eaten all day but I felt light, with my eyes closed and the birds making their tentative stirrings and the generator whirring in the distance. It felt peaceful, jhootha hi sahi :)
Now it's 545 am and men outside are clearing their throats and spitting great globules of saliva with guttural growls, the hungry cat outside has awoken in its quest for breakfast and I am turning in for the day.
I only believe in god when I'm in trouble. I pray to my own guilty conscience, or send messages to the IF when things go FUBAR. That sincerity, however is never for myself.
I grew up with a mother who gave me Osho books and Old Path White Clouds to read when I was 10, who put on 'Sacred Chants of the Buddha' some afternoons in our one room apartment and we'd both SWAY, just for the fuck of it. The only tapes we'd listen to on our 8 hours journeys to the hills were Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen. I was dressed up as Shiva or Krishna on random days when she felt like it and one of my only memories of my grandfather is him folding his hands to me (on one of his last days) dressed like Krishna perched on a stool doing something cute. My dad follows the Gita with less of a philosophers sense of awe at the creator's Maya but a soldier's sense of duty and dharma. Ram and the Army are touchy subjects at my house, prone to inciting loud drunken, polarizing debates on weekends. And if us siblings are suspected of having snuck some beef curry, our beered up sentimental mother yells "Tumne apni MA ko khaya hai" at us.
Our family artis once a year on Diwali are famous disasters, out of sync, out of tune, fumbling with the words my brother and I, waiting to go pop open the beers and patakas. My brother feels some of the angst of living in a foreign land among the hostile, ignorant, benevolently confused or simply aloof strangers and gets defensive of his culture. He is a seeker, despite being a nastik like me, despite knowing the molecules that make up our bodies.
Unlike the characters of the book, I've never had a path laid down for me, or been told what is haraam or halal. The only one questioning the basis of me is me alone, though I may be equally lost in the greater quests for paths and labels.
I've never tried to seek spiritual fruits. All my journeys inwards have been simple self conscious nitpicking, so I envy them their ultimate goal of fana.
The sun hasn't risen yet but the orange lights at the UFO institute have made way for him. I pull my blinds down slowly, the birds are awake now. A few hours ago, in the early inky blue A.M, I was on the swing taking a break to rest my eyes that stung with the heat. I shut my eyes and just let the swing rock on its own with the wind and felt like I was swinging free, suspended in mid air, maybe it was because I had barely eaten all day but I felt light, with my eyes closed and the birds making their tentative stirrings and the generator whirring in the distance. It felt peaceful, jhootha hi sahi :)
Now it's 545 am and men outside are clearing their throats and spitting great globules of saliva with guttural growls, the hungry cat outside has awoken in its quest for breakfast and I am turning in for the day.
4 comments:
writing about books is an uncomfortable sort of thing because you never feel like you can do justice and a good book does too many things to you at the same time. i get it all the time. have studied nothing for tomorrow (ZILCH ZERO) and want to write my mountains post but i will fail. spirituality is not sought bro, it's found. :)
ahaha dude i love your swing ufo trips.
Yeah, that's exactly it brother. About books.
Mountains jake tere toh tewar hi badal gaye hain tewar *Raveena style*. Spiritual wiritual chodh, party karte hain. Old Monk se diksha leni hai bro. Rum sharanam gacchami.
'Crack of dawn'--always a funny phrase.
And damn, Old Monk in this weather? You folks are worse than the incorrigible DU kids I know.
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