My God!

It was a bad day. Work was mundane in the office. There were awful traffic jams. I was forced to walk for quite a long distance and was getting irritated with the whole affair. I wanted to get home ASAP. That’s when I just thought I might as well start thinking of my next blog. So I thought I would write about the traffic in Hyderabad. I walked on forming the rough draft of the blog mentally. Then I stumbled on a mound of earth and fell down. I scratched my palm and feet. I got a bit irritated and sent a complaint to the heavens. I screamed within,”Oh God! Why such a pathetic day?”

That’s when I thought hey! I can write about my God.

My belief in God is strange (others say so, though I find it logical). I am always reminded of a story when I think of him.

When I was in school our Moral Science teacher once narrated this story.

She said, once there was a man sitting on the banks of a river and thinking about God.

He saw a small child dig a hole in the bank. The child then ran to the river to get some water and poured it in the hole. He went on doing this for quite some time. Curious, the man called the child and asked him what he was doing. The child replied that he was trying to empty the river and put all the water in the hole he had dug. The man started laughing and said it was impossible. The child was a bit crest-fallen. But then he asked the man what he was doing. The man replied that he was trying to understand God.

The child laughed hard and said that it might be possible to that he would empty the river into his hole, but it is impossible to understand God. Because God is limitless and unfathomable.

This is the crux of my belief in God.

When I go to temples, my friends say I should put some amount of money when I take the Aarti. It is like we offer some thing in return for his blessings. I comply with their wishes; because I don’t want to show case my debating prowess in a temple. But in my heart of hearts I am like, come on God would not want these change coins.

And my daily interactions with Him are pretty casual.

On the way to my office there is a Ganesh temple. It is a very small temple on the street. But India being the land of the devout, it is usually crowded for the good part of the day. And every day I make it a point to say hi to Him. But some days down the line, the journey to office started getting a bit frustrating as trains got too delayed from their schedule and got too crowded. So one day I shot a prayer to the deity, “Give me a safe and comfortable journey today”. And that day the train was bang on time and I traveled like a queen, with very few people standing in the train.

After that day every day I say the same prayer to him. It’s not that every day I get a seat and the train is never delayed. But usually I have some company to entertain me if the train is too much off the schedule. The days I don’t get a seat, the weather is so nice that I forget about the standing completely. Other days I end up meeting some one interesting if I am standing and making new friends. So each day He answers my prayer in his own sweet way.

And some days He answers my prayers just at the nick of time. I see the “hand of God” when the electricity comes back when I ask Him. Or when He sends the bus after I have stood for no longer than 10 minutes at the bus-stop; because He knows that my patience threshold is low. Or when He stops the rain when I am about to go for shopping : ). Really I can’t think of the zillions of times when He has done the right thing at the right time.

I don’t believe in fasting and performing rituals for appeasement of deities. I am also not a temple freak because I feel closer and more in sync with God in my own small room. My belief in Him is too informal and for some borders on being profane.

But one of my friends says, my belief in God makes her believe in Him.

Amen. : )