Was that God?

These words were sent to me:

‘Look back on your day, find those moments when you encountered God and thank him.  In that gratitude, find joy and the reason for being you.’

So, I looked back on the day:

A watery sun breaks through the clouds, early in the morning, after a spell of violent gusting rain.

Was that God?

A friend called to say that she was thinking of me and had prayed for my well-being.

Was that God?

Went shopping and – unusually - got all the items on my list! (And I did not need to open my umbrella on the way home.)

Was that God?

My favourite breakfast cereal is back on the shelves after years (happy, happy surprise).

Was that God?

Sat down with a colleague to complete a task:  it turned out to be a sharing experience at many levels.

Was that God?

Still found time in a busy day for my favourite hobby – crochet.

Was that God?

And even more time to read the next few pages of my current library book.

Was that God?

Tried a new recipe.  It turned out tasty.

Was that God?

Received many uplifting quotes on FB.

Was that God?

Shared a chocolate bar with the elderly woman who sits at the corner of the street.  Her smile was dazzling.

Was that God?

In another time, another place, I came across the words: If you can be grateful for everything - appreciating the good and forgiving the bad - then you are peace with yourself, with God and with man.

The gift of reading – that encounter with the word – is that God?

Drenched but not quenched!

Yesterday, I set out dry on an errand that was imperative in its urgency. Cocooned in AC comfort while waiting for a print run to be completed, I was oblivious to what was happening outside. Imagine my horror on being confronted by a torrential downpour and a howling wind, when I opened the door! In the span of just fifteen minutes, the weather had changed dramatically. Courageously clutching my inadequate brolly (I like ‘humble brother’ too!) I braved the rain. Home and bedraggled, I headed for a hot bath and an equally steaming cup of chicken soup. Seated by the window, I watched others struggle against the storm and commiserated.

There is nothing quite like the wet and windy Indian monsoon. I know. I have waded through waist deep murky pools in the concrete jungle and in the real one too. I have trudged through rural sludge and through urban slush. And I have muttered imprecations at the weather gods for picking on hapless me.

But there is a flip side. I have seen the wonder of a firmament lit up end to end by streaks of blazing lightning – a pyrotechnic fantasy, and I have heard the swell of thunder – crashing cymbals and reverberating drum rolls, building up crescendo upon crescendo till the climactic finale. (Yes, I am spellbound by thunder and lightning, and maybe one day, I’ll learn to dance in the rain without protective battle gear!) And I realise that I am but a speck in this great cosmos. But, I am here – an indelible fragment in the history of humankind. To paraphrase Descartes, I experience, therefore I am.

Foolhardy, frivolous and fun?

Dare and double dare? Heard that one before?

My father told me about a dare which he once carried through (yes, he had an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes!). When he was a very junior officer in the army and stationed in Delhi, his batch mates dared him to drive his jeep into the Officers’ Mess. This entailed taking the jeep up a considerable flight of steps leading to the entrance and then into the dining hall. Not one to say he couldn’t do it, my father took on the dare and carried it through. This was corroborated by another officer who was party to the event, so I know that it really happened!

Dares were silly things: challenges between friends which could be ridiculous, hilarious, and hair-raising but very rarely downright dangerous. They may have entailed breaking the rules but never the law. They ranged from putting frogs in the teacher’s desk (been there, done that!) to hanging unmentionables on the Institute’s flagstaff. None of the dares we undertook had tragic consequences; they only earned mild censure (apart from adding to ‘hoary legend’). What is more, the challenge was undertaken willingly – even with a tinge of excitement - and without coercion. Invariably, the challenger and the challenged were partners in crime as well. Those were the times of naïve, even foolish, audacity and derring-do.

There were no fast cars (thanks to no money), no drugs, no alcohol, no guns. And some dares had happy outcomes too. My father was at one time a chain smoker. Then his batman (not the caped crusader but an attendant attached to an officer posted at camp) dared him to give up. It wasn’t easy (and he couldn’t cheat because the batman was virtually his left arm) but, as already stated, my father couldn’t resist a challenge and he gave up smoking for good. The batman lost but got his bottle of rum anyway. Two winners!

Challenges tested one’s mettle. Challenges could be remembered with a grin and sometimes a grimace (did I really do that?).

Where did things go wrong? When did challenges turn criminal? When was innocence lost?

I once read an article on ‘Why toy guns should be banished’ as it was felt that such toys were responsible for turning men into killing machines (published a generation ago, it did not ‘implicate’ girls). The author argued the point back and forth and concluded that even if toy guns were banned, all the child had to do was point two fingers and say, ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’. Boys will be boys.

Perhaps what we thought was innocent fun was not so innocent after all. Perhaps it was the precursor to more inventive and even more dangerous dares. Or was it?

Growing a Thinner Skin

Ragging – that initiation ‘ritual’ that triggers perverse imagination in the ragger and cold sweat in the victim. Why does it exist?

When I made the transition from schoolgirl to undergrad, my father made an appointment with one of the nuns at the college to tour the premises. It must have helped that her surname too was Grant. We were taken around the classrooms, the library, the dorms and I remember fish tanks with goldfish. All through the tour, my father gently probed and Mother Grant responded with a running commentary. Then my father asked about ragging. He had been a boarder - school and college – and had received his fair share. He did not want me to experience a similar fate.

What my father did not know was that I was no stranger to being ragged. A new school and a new girl in the class, I had to ‘prove’ that I fitted in. It started with little things – an exercise book extracted from the bag and ‘lost’, being locked in the toilet and made late for class, ink splashed on the uniform - and then graduated to being suspended over the parapet on the second floor above ground level. I was eleven years old. I sobbed my way through the year but I did not tell. Ratting was one degree worse than cowardice.

College was a romp. We were all new girls together and being day students, the seniors were not interested in us. The hostelites had a different story to tell. The sensitive ones suffered; the tougher ones laughed it off – it could not be cured so had to be endured.

Then came the working world. Once again, one was the new girl in a set environment and one had to run the gauntlet of the subtle and not so subtle ‘initiation rites’. You remained the outsider until the insiders decided to let you in. After I got over feeling sorry for myself, I decided to get on with the job and never realised that I had become an insider till I left the organization and my ‘worst enemies’ expressed regret! Did my earlier experience of being ragged come in handy? I think not. Every such encounter hurts in its own way.

The insider-outsider attitude is not new. It is generations old. The tribal world has some of the most cruel, life threatening initiation rites – the passage to adulthood is an act of survival. And the civilized world is no better. Scratch the surface and you’ll find out; public transport is a good place to start! Till you become an accepted ‘regular’ in the compartment, you will know the sharp elbow, the not so subtle insult and the very edge of the fourth seat!

But I digress. Ragging is deliberate, premeditated, planned and considered a privilege by its perpetrators. But is it a rite of passage? A time honoured tradition? Does it make or break character? And are the ragged entitled to wear a badge of honour?

I would have to state my answer as a resounding NO. It may be a tradition but there is certainly no honour and I do not think there is any merit in being a victim either. I cringe when I now remember the abject obsession to be an insider at school. Thankfully, the past is over and I have moved on.

No one should have to face humiliation for the sake of another’s amusement. And no decent human being should expect to be so amused.

Time and maturity bring us to the realisation that we are all included; no one is an outsider in God’s perfect plan for our great universe and we are ‘fitted in’ exactly where we are meant to be. By being inclusive we learn to be sensitive to the other; there should really be no need for a thicker skin. If only time did not take so long to teach us so. And if only those who rag could realise that they are really wasting their time.

An Armchair World

Bungalows with gardens, as residences, were taken for granted till we finally settled in Bombay in the mid sixties (it was still Bombay then!). That was when I was introduced to the boxed in way of life. The size of the box depended on social and financial status and, of course, inheritance. The smaller apartments were classified as either ‘shoebox size’ or ‘matchbox size’ and not much imagination is required to visualize these homes.

We finally moved into a one-bedroom apartment, small by the standards of the time but spacious by today’s. I found it claustrophobic. Yet, there are those who make their home in an 8 x 10 room, furnished with a bed, some folding chairs, a table, a cupboard, a fridge and a TV. The kitchen is a small platform at one end of the room and the bathing area a curtained-off alcove. Families of four, six and more have grown up happily in such cramped spaces. I have often wondered how.

In the last few months, we have had to share our living space with a burly, hirsute Haryanvi – the ward boy who cares for my husband in the daytime. Since he has, necessarily, to share the bedroom, I take myself off to the armchair by the window in a neighbouring room. When I am not cooking or pottering, this chair becomes my comfort zone – a place to read, to crochet, to daydream, to pray and to watch the cats or the rest of the world go by. There is elbow room for my cup of tea and the reading of the moment – books which take me to different places and through other people’s minds. Thread, hook and pattern dwell in the bag by my feet.

The chair, transformed by antimacassars and cushions, observes the seasons too: Christmas, Easter, Summer and the monsoon. Christmastime is special because I can sit next to the Nativity scene and take in the beauty of each hand carved figure, testament to a talent lovingly employed. At Easter, the aroma of Easter eggs fills the air; some received, some waiting to be gifted. Summer exposes me to the full heat of the sun, no tanning parlour required! And come the monsoon, the displays of thunder and lightning fill the window frame. The smell of freshened earth rises in the steam of the first rain and as the clouds let down their bounty, I sit snug and secure in my little world, appreciating the ‘awesome wonder’ on the other side.

It is a small space, confined and clearly demarcated. If I stretch my arms, I can almost touch the walls on either side. And, yet, here I am extraordinarily content. Could it be because the heart is at home?