Akka Ajji, More God Stuff, and Story-telling

My grandmother (mother's side), or Ajji, was to me the representative of what it meant for a person to be a Hindu, being the only religious person around me. Known to all my cousins as Akka Ajji, since most of them perhaps had to distinguish her from their other grandmother, she was simply Ajji to me and my siblings, given that we never knew our paternal grandmother. A rather devout woman, Ajji was the antidote to my rational thinking about the existence (or lack thereof) of God.

We were lucky (at least, that was my view) that growing up, Ajji and Ajoba (grandfather) spent several months of the year at our house, since Aai was a doctor and could take care of them. Ajoba was for some time mostly bedridden. Ajji always woke up early, as was the custom for most people of that generation, and went out walking in the neighborhood, collecting flowers for the morning prayers, which were offered with unfailing consistency at the altar in their room. The altar was a portable metallic temple, with little statues of various gods - Ganapati, Shankar, Ram, Krishna, Lakshmi, Saraswati, come to mind - decorated with newly drawn rangoli in front of it, and fresh flowers of the day within. Along with the flowers were 'Durva', or blades of three-pronged grass that looked like Shiva's trishul (trident) and were especially collected as offerings for Shiva or Ganapati (Ganesh). I remember many pleasant walks with her at 5:30 AM, carefully collecting exactly 21 durva.

It struck me very early on that humans are full of contradictions, and I was acutely aware of my own, with skepticism and faith both existing in my mind on an equal footing, except in her presence. The serenity in her face as she prayed or sang or chanted wiped out any skepticism within me, if only temporarily. I never met another adult in my life who had the simple charm or innocence that she did. She was at once a wise adult and the playful child. Her strong belief in God, in prayer, in all the rituals she followed made me want to believe it all too. I remember several visits to the local temple - Ram Mandir - with her, where as a kid the most joyful experience was to jump up and ring the temple bell.

Ajji's greatest talent was as a storyteller. Apart from us siblings, childhood friends and next-door neighbors Anant and Milind Talpallikar were regular visitors to our house in the evenings to listen to Ajji tell stories. And what stories they were!! Ramayan and Mahabharat were of course the staple diet with a wonderful storehouse of tales, but her repertoire went far beyond those. We heard Aesop's fables, Arabian Nights, and believe it or not, even murder mysteries by Agatha Christie. I still remember hearing her tell the story of "Elephants can Remember", an Hercule Poirot mystery. I cannot imagine anyone else being able to tell a story like that to children between the ages of 7 and 13, keeping it understandble, the suspense intact, and holding their attention from beginning to end. Her memory for details in a story and the overall ability to tell a story were peerless. The constant cry from us kids after a story was "aata ajun ek!" ("one more story, please!").

Storytelling in that sense is pretty much a dead artform in the modern age, with movies and TV taking up the role. Parents read story books to their children still, but to simply sit and narrate a story from memory is now almost unknown, I think. Who has the time to remember?

Chinese Checkers and Bizique (a card game with 8 decks of cards, 2s through 7s removed) were two major pastimes with Ajji. Both games were played with enthusiasm by all family members, and as children, I think they had a big role in improving our spatial skills, strategy, and basic math. Ajji, always childlike in demeanour, was also like a child in another way - she hated to lose at either game! She would throw a tantrum if she lost . Well, almost a tantrum - she would pout, get upset and in general her emotions were plainly writ on her face, a trait that made her all the more endearing. The recovery was just as quick, though. I never recall her holding a grudge for long.

Ajji was a self-published author of her own poetry in Marathi (in several volumes titled 'Antariche Bol') - which, like everything else about her, was simple. Some of the adults in the extended family derided it as simplistic, and then praised it after she died (the typical hypocrisy of the adult human!). I always enjoyed reading it or listening to her read from it.

Ajji died in the Summer of 1988, at the age of 84 (I think) in an old folks home, of burns when her clothes caught on fire. Whether accident or suicide is uncertain. Her impact on my childhood has been tremendous, and shaped some of my basic beliefs about life.

God Stuff

Hari (good to begin with God's name?!) gets some credit for urging me to start a blog and get down to writing, something I always thought about but never got around to doing. Used to do a little writing in college, mostly humour (at least I thought it was!), but then got out of the habit. I always thought there was something conceited about writing one's thoughts - the assumption that someone else would be interested in what I think. I suppose that would be interpreted as problems with self-esteem - I can just hear the new age rebukes! On the other hand, one can write for oneself, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Anyhow, such arguments go back and forth for ever in my head, and I end up not writing anything. So the heck with the arguments, and here goes ...

I might as well start my first blog with God. As early as in the seventh grade, I remember thinking that the concept of God made no sense. I remember a Hindi teacher, Mr. Yadayya Sagar, telling us in class that he would prove God's existence. He dramatically held up a piece of chalk and said, "This chalk did not simply happen, did it? Someone made it. In the same way, someone made all of us, and that is God". I remember thinking that that was a silly argument, for if everything needs a maker, then who made God? I certainly did not voice my objection, for this man was feared by one and all for his famous wall-chair punishment meted out to children, and though I never received that treatment, I had no desire to find out how open-minded he was to disagreements with his opinions. He was, by the way, a very good teacher, quite well liked and respected. Anyhow, I had no answer to the "who made God" or "who made the universe" question myself, and I still do not. I suspect that no one else does either.

The question of why anything exists rather than not is fascinating, but ultimately unanswerable, I think. The most palatable explanation of human existence I have found is the old Indian idea, restated by many in modern times, that there is one consciousness that can only experience itself through myriad manifestations of life forms, humans being among them. It still does not account for why the original consciousness exists rather than not.

Growing up, I found the question "Do you believe in God?" a very awkward one to answer, because I realized very early that there were too many assumptions built into the question, depending on who asked it. What exactly did one mean by that question? If God is simply a label for an abstract force that caused the universe to exist, then God exists by definition because the universe exists. One might as well call the universe God. However, belief in God is hopelessly tangled with ideas of how God expects humans to behave. People assume that belief in God goes hand in hand with all kinds of other things, such as the idea that one must pray, or go to a temple or church or mosque on certain days, or any of a million other beliefs regarding day to day activities. Most human strife can be primarily attirbuted to this - the belief that there is a God that consciously orchestrates events, that there is a particular way he/she/it expects people to behave, and worst of all, that my group or religion is the only one that knows the true way.

I am getting tired of writing now, so I will end with this thought. As I write this first blog of mine, I am also watching the second cricket test match between Australia and India at Sydney on another window of my computer, and despite crazy umpiring on day 1 of the game, India just took a first innings lead with centuries by Laxman and Sachin. So I know there is a God :-) !!