The Call of Prayer

A call sounds in the distance. Like a ripple in still water the sound has become feeble by the time it reaches me. I feel a tingle of anticipation. I know what is coming next. A powerful voice resounds across the horizons and I distinctly make out the words Allah o Akbar as they reverberate from a mosque far away.  Once again I am aware of a sense of tranquility steal over me. For a few moments the four walls of my room seem to enclose a temple, a sacred space, For a few moments I am at peace with myself.

            In my mind’s eye I see the faithful as they kneel and bow their heads with a singularity of purpose and a beauty of symmetry, unique to a flight of birds. My head as if wills itself to bow and I become one with the many others who are united in their reverence for what is greater than them. These prayers it seems to me, echo through the recesses of time filling the expanse of space. The sound rich with the faith that has survived centuries, carried forward on this very tide of prayers.  Their prayers resonate in the skies as if calling upon their God, to descend from the heavens. Till now it has never struck me, that their God is different from mine, and I hope it never will.

As a teenager, I fancied myself an atheist, only to realize that it was my indifference to the idea of religion. Trying to place religion in my life only brought to mind memories, of numerous poojas attended, attractive only for their incense filled milieus  and the incentive of delicious Prasad. Visits to the temples were not only bereft of these attractions, they brought with them a sense of nausea, long lines, and sweaty bodies. Nothing in them inspired faith in me.

My first brush with the namaz however was quite unpleasant. As a 12 year old I briefly stayed in Oman. The house my family occupied happened to be just across a mosque, which I was told was an important one in the city. Five times a day, seven days a week, the blaring noise disrupted the peace of our household. The proximity of the mosque ensured the highest possible volumes.  Instead of having a calming effect it was a source of disturbance to us who couldn’t or didn’t think it was possible for us to be a part of these prayers.

Years later I have come to realize that figuratively being too close to the source of this repeated recital of their faith created an artificial sense of belief for those who did it and was seemingly offensive to those who didn’t share this faith. Religious fervor can transform itself into fanaticism, if rituals become mindless and soulless. But I may be wrong after all, their faith may hold stronger and truer than mine ever was, untested by time.

Coming to me from a distance the prayers acquire a mystical, magical quality. The distance gifts me perspective, and a welcome sense of detachment, the knowledge that I am not bound by ritual. This is the closest I have come to faith. I have only been touched by it; no depths have been explored or discovered. But it took a faraway mosque, an alien religion and a prayer without words to wake me to my faith. A call sounds in the distance, and I answer.

-18 years, 2006

Young and Restless

I turned eighteen quite recently and quite suddenly.  First things first, the ‘I am now an adult’ thing is majorly over hyped. All the problems of the world vanishing, a new dawn,  a brilliant flash of light…nothing of the sort happened, what happened instead was this article,  the seeds of this one were sown when I entered college, specifically The Sri Ram College of Commerce.  Straightaway it struck me that something was gnawing at the collective creative conscience of this place. The place smells of ambition, competition, but what happened to the fragrance of eloquence, aesthetics, and passion. You might argue that a commerce college would of course be and behave like a commerce college especially one that has a title to live up to, but something is seriously not right or absent completely. So when different types of coercion and persuasion tactics become the only way to get people to write articles for student journals, when spiders find luxurious accommodation in the shelves containing books that aren’t on your syllabus or on your mind, I almost feel pain. And it’s not as if there is dearth of intellectual capacity. Accepted that life isn’t economics where you can take excellent academic performance as constant and go about developing your artistic side, but something somewhere is dying, and this isn’t only about our college.   


So many out there fancy themselves as rebels, but do we know what rebellion really is? That piercing doest signify rebellion, reading or even writing articles that advocate change doesn’t signify rebellion. If you want to challenge, challenge the ideas that have been taught to you. Those ideas about happiness, success that have been handed down to you in heritance. It’s really a funny thing we are trying to accomplish, our great need is to be accepted, but accepted as the best. We want to stand out and yet not stand out. We are just too damned scared of being different. How are you supposed to be better if you can’t even risk being different? But how many times have you actually even thought about yourself, and I am not talking of think of yourself in terms of what others think about you, or should think about you for that matter. So what do you think about yourself? Can you claim to have the space to live your lives, to think the way you want to, to dream your dreams, and believe in them .Rebellion is being able to think (quite rare nowadays) to be able to imagine and re-imagine the way you lead your life. Who is asking you to give up that IIM-A dream or a brilliant career, but it’s important to understand that human beings aren’t products to be sold in markets. Every step of your education isn’t a step in value addition so that you can be sold at higher market prices. There are values of an entirely different kind that exist in the world too. The value of beauty, of work, of doing something to the best of your ability, which is reward in itself. Every phase in our life isn’t a, or shall we say isn’t just a step on the ladder to success. Ladders both metaphorically as well as literally have too little room; it doesn’t take too much to lose balance and fall .And anyway once you reach the top, you might as well enjoy a view of the world below, things from which you have so distanced yourself in your great pursuit to the top. 


Naïve as it may sound sometimes I really wonder what we are all driving at… so let me spell out the perfect life for at least a majority of the people reading this article, the realms of reality notwithstanding, Work hard( these portions don’t apply to geniuses) top your school, get into the best college,( [X]you are here by the way) so that you can work harder to get into a top institute for post grad, work even harder to get that dream job, the dream quotient of which is determined by the pay pack, work still more harder to reach the top of the job hierarchy. I don’t think I should continue, maybe I should just come up with a function to describe this set pattern. That’s what we are, aren’t we?…consumers trying to maximize returns from given resources. People shaped by the big (bad?) consumerist world. Sadly our ideas seem to follow a pattern too. And I am not ruling out all that you count as your cultural life… movies, music, television and netsurfing. Even that’s quite statistical actually, 80% people watched Dhoom, 15% watched Umrao Jaan (the new recycled version) 20 % liked it for Ash 30% because the newspapers said it was good… etc. etc.  We have so many choices these days, but everybody’s life seems to be a permutation or combination of the same events maybe even feelings who knows. We are so diverse aren’t we, I didn’t like the song he did, and if she liked the song too…Whoa! lets form a community on orkut!! It really got me wondering about myself and how I fit into the scheme of things. Here are the questions you may consider asking yourself and statements to ponder over…

Are we becoming one of those standard individuals, whose whole life can be summed up in statistics?

Are our achievements in life contained in the mark sheets that form our sacrosanct CVs???

Are we so obsessed with our futures that our present holds no charm to us.

The million dollar (pun intended) question is, what brings happiness…both poverty and riches have failed.

Dr CV Raman on education; the object of education is to create something, to see something grow.

Today the irony is that we are in awe of machines which can think, and scared of human beings who try to…  

 18 years, 2006

Ganesha Ala Re!

In Indian tradition, the principle of “Athithi Devo Bhava” or “Guest is God” is well known, but when it comes to the Ganesh festival, the opposite holds true; “Devo Athithi Bhava”. Indeed for the duration of the festival, which can be anything from 2 to 11 days, Lord Ganesha is the Guest of Honour at the Maharashtrian households across India. The idol is hosted with great style and splendor, before it is bid adieu at the banks of a river or seashore, where it is immersed.

It may sound like a bland description of another festival, but to really appreciate the Ganesha festival in all its colourful glory, you have to experience it first hand. I fortunately get this opportunity every year. Even being based in Delhi, has not prevented it from becoming an annual feature of my family life. This may seem slightly unusual to those who have seen the Ganesh Utsav celebrations on television. Indeed everything seems to be happening at such a grand scale. The Ganesh idol itself cuts a pretty yet intimidating picture. As a matter of fact, public celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi came about only in the 20^th century when Bal Gangadhar Tilak popularized its celebrations involving the masses as a means to inculcate a feeling of nationalism and bring about political unity in the country which explains why the Ganesh Chaturthi is no longer confined to homes, or even Maharashtra. And the Maharashtra Utsav going on at Delhi Haat this week just goes to prove this.

At my home, of course, it still remains a more or less private affair, as it has always been. And to me it has been around forever. My earliest memories of it, are infact not even from India, they are from the time we celebrated it in Singapore with much fervor. The fervor arising out of the fact that then it was a matter of cultural identity that we as Indians in a foreign land clung on to. Not to say that any of the fervor was lost when we came back to India. After all, the rituals, customs and the food remain the same. The hymn chanting and aarti create a temple like feel in the pooja room. The head of the family; my father leads the hymn chanting. ‘Aarti’ basically involves a diya circumscribing the deity in invisible circles, is an arm wrenching exercise that has to be performed by the family members while the chanting goes on. A ghanti (a small bell) and clapping of hands provide the sound effects. And believe me the total effect is quite pleasant. Over the years, my role in these poojas have undergone a subtle change. As a child the sound and light of the show attracted me, and thus the aarti and the ghanti were my areas of expertise. I found that even lip-syncing the hymns which are entirely in Sanskrit, was a difficult task, which involved twisting of your mouth in various unsavory shapes. Though I never gave up trying, something which has to do with the monkey tendency children exhibit when it comes to parental actions. And somewhere down the line I did manage to pick up the words, which remain as meaningless to me now, as they were then.

What however does not remain a mystery is the rituals. As all Hindu Poojas are conducted, even in the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, prosperity remains the main theme. While the idol itself is to be surrounded by fruits on betel leaves, the culinary preparations are also elaborate. ‘Modak’ is the food of choice for dear Lord Ganesha. It is an onion shaped flour momo, which is filled with sweetened grated coconut. Even a non-foodie like me relishes this item. And I have a feeling so does Lord Ganesha, who is famous for his pot belly and the ladoo he holds in one of his many hands (a real boon for a real foodie, I guess). But the most extraordinary feature of Lord Ganesha is undeniably the elephant head. Mythology has it that Lord Shiva chopped off his son, Ganesha’s head in a fit of anger. His anger was justified so to say, he had prevented Shiva from entering his own home on the pretext that Parvati, his mother and of course Shiva’s wife was taking a bath. Its hard to pass a moral judgement on all this, but the result was that Ganesha ended up with a elephant head. The story does not end here. It is believed that Shiva, repenting his act, also granted a special status to Gajanana by issuing a divine decree that thenceforth Gajanana would be the first to be invoked in every prayer and only after this, could the invocation of any other God takes place.

Mythology also has an explanation for why the ‘Elephant God’ has a mouse as his preferred ‘vehicle’ or ‘vahaan’ as it is called. The mythological explanations are lost on me, but the humor isn’t. Somehow Lord Ganesha has an air of joviality surrounding him. One can’t help but feel sad when the ‘Visarjan’ or immersion day comes around. This is preceded by a family lunch, where Food is offered to the God, and also eaten as Prasad. This completes his stay at one’s home. Before being taken for Visarjan, the idol is also shown around the house. Funny as it may sound, He looks quite at home, cradled in the loving arms of my father who is responsible for showing Him around our humble abode. There is no dearth of fanfare when the Visarjan actually happens. The faithful see off their beloved lord and wait, patiently, knowing that he shall return, next year, and the next and the next, as long as their faith in Him persists. He who comes as a guest, lives as family and leaves as a God.

THE BLINKING CURSOR

Hello said the cursor, we are at it again. You and me working together to fill in the gaps that exist between thought and expression.

  Even as you read these words you are allowed to visualize the tiny little thing blinking away on some screen, patiently bearing the pregnant pauses that punctuate its progress every time a new sentence is born.  It’s strange to describe the way in which one writes and even stranger to choose it as a way of introducing yourself to someone.  But Candid Expressions is not someone and introducing a student’s journal to the students for whom it exists is itself a strange proposition.

 So let’s start at the very beginning, Candid Expressions came into being 5 years ago but to tell you the truth it comes alive every time the process described above happens.  Candid is all about celebrating the written word, but it’s also much more than that. Candid is celebrating the ability to think independently and express freely. Why ‘thought’ you may ask, afterall you can write a few grammatically correct sentences and bingo it’s done. So why make such a big deal about it. Simply because no one won a noble prize for an answer they wrote in an exam. Reproducing someone’s else ideas intelligently is valuable (if marks are an indicator of value) but it is not invaluable. What is invaluable is the ability to learn from your own life and to express ideas that have come to you through hard work (sorry guys but cramming is not the kind of hard work being referred to). At the same time it is also the ability express those views which you believe to be right, with a courage and conviction that is your own. Indeed writing is one of the most educative exercises invented by human beings. They say life is a journey not a destination. Nothing can more appropriately describe the act of writing. And words are only the end product, much more goes into it than what meets the eye ( literally). Just as a painting is not random brush strokes written pieces are not arbitrary words strung together, they are an accumulation of impulses that may have their source inside or outside of yourself.

We would like to clarify that our objective in glorifying our noble pursuit is not to get you to send in more articles than we can publish but to- in every sense of the word- inspire thought. You may one day realize that thought is not enough and we hope that in your wanting to work with the blinking cursor you would keep the idea of Candid Expressions alive.

Celebrations Unlimited: The Hindustani Way of Life

Happy B’day Butter thief! B’day?… nah Janmashtami; butterthief? Nah…makhan chor! The WCP (western culture phobic) can take a chill pill; even the west has no ‘cure’ for our festivals. Remember the Ganesh Chaturthi festival that became a focal point for the masses during the Indian struggle for independence? Maybe you don’t, but as a resident of Hindustan you can hardly escape the onslaught of these momentous annual celebrations. Mind you the word ‘Hindustan’ is a carefully chosen one, I personally am not a fan of any one religion, yet it has not escaped my notice that the Hindu religion, whatever it might not have, does have the most colourful profile vis-à-vis all the contemporary religions. And for a lot of Hindus the true import of religion in their lives is as good as its ceremonial equivalent.

Celebrations have a funny way of getting to you.. Imagine the absurdity of celebrating the b’day of a God like that of a new born child, I am sure you find it difficult to comprehend, it some how seems to be just the most apt thing to do. Right now the whole religious component of the festival is lost on me, the idea of a nation wide b’day party, has me chuckling. And it strikes me that the festival has been a success. For isn’t spreading joy the be all and end all of all festivals? Then taking the liberty and with due apologies to the little (big) one, I drift further. The morning telecasts of “Krishna” flash before me. I can’t help the laughter this time. Imagine standing with solemn reverence before the deity of one of the most sought after man of his time (and even later, Mirabai anyone?)

There may, for all my ignorance, exist 101 reasons why the festival is celebrated. Here is my list. It’s a celebration of relationships, from childhood to motherhood, from love to friendship. It celebrates illusions, a while world weaved around not even a wisp of fact? Where would you find such ingenuity? And accept it or not, the world loves its illusions just as much as you and I love ours. It celebrates life. I have no words to describe this one; if I could I would have painted Krishnaji in his world embracing avatar, the one he supposedly revealed to Arjun on the fateful day when the whole Bhagwad Gita was composed. To give our forefathers due credit, they wrote out a mythology more compelling than any Harry Potter book, all you need to do is look back with perspective and everything falls into place. How is one supposed to depict life to a human, except as a human?

Giving philosophy a much deserved break, the pragmatic endures. The chanting of the bhajans brings me back, to the pooja room and the topic- Festivals, which my mom contends are dying out. I fear her fear is real. After my parents generation I doubt the little that’s left of the festival in my life will survive. Or maybe it would. In essence I believe. In fact, to add a twist to the whole tragic story, let’s just say we might be following a circular path (religion never promised to be anything else anyway). We may be charged of materialism, but it seems that worshipping the ‘good life’ will never be out of season; festive or otherwise.