The Collision of the Doppelgangers

The whole world is outside tonight, waiting for the clock to strike midnight, waiting to introduce themselves to the new year. That’s stupid, don’t you think? We decide that there are going to be 365 days in a year, and when the 365th day passes us, we set the counter to 0. And we celebrate the fact that we’re going to have to do it all over again, from 1 to 365, each painful day at a time. I don’t understand what the celebration is about, honestly. Why would you want to do it all over again? Why not go from number 1 to number 365 and then number 366 to number 731? At least that will make us feel good about how much we’re done with as the numbers accumulate.

But this year is different. For me. For everyone else, it’s the same. Of course, it’s different because it’s new, but it’s the same because every year is new. One year ago, they were doing the same thing, and one year down the line, they will be doing the same thing. I don’t remember what I was doing one year ago, but it was probably something insignificant, something banal, that doesn’t deserve to be remembered 365 days hence. Tonight, I am restless. It’s not the New Year hooplah, no. It’s the knowledge that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life and I don’t know what to make of it, don’t know what to do with it. I walk around the house looking for something to mark this day with, something that I will remember the next time the words "happy", "new" and "year" ring in my head. Today, the rest of my life has been given to me on a platter. I know how that sounds, like I am one of those spoilt English girls growing up in colonial India, like I have three ayahs to wait on me, a playpen of my own and all you have to do to know more about is open Burnett’s A Little Princess. But no. This is free India and I am not English, or spoilt and I have never had a playpen or an ayah. I am someone for whom a decision has been made, someone who wanted to do one thing for the "rest of my life" and now must do another. For that is what has been decided upon for me. And alas, try as I might, I cannot alter it. Parts of me try to resolve this dissonance by reminding me what my current bookmark says, that things happen for a reason, and a good one at that. But, I know better.

I pick up the the bookmark and go searching for my bold black marker, the one I correct life with. When I find it, I uncap it and sigh, like I used to do before beginning an exam. I alter the meaning on the bookmark, scratch words, add some here, blacken some there. It now reads: When things don’t go our way, we console ourselves by saying that it all happens for a good reason. I look at it for a long time; it feels long, anyway. I like it much better now. Now, it looks like it belongs to me.

Satisfied, I turn away, my thoughts turning back to tomorrow, and the rest of my life. It doesn’t belong to me yet. It’s like a child I have been forced to adopt and love, it is mine, but doesn’t feel so. And I look back and forth between the child and the person who forced him on me. I smile.

And then I cry. I am scared of the rest of my life.

Hare Krishna, he said.

"I wasn't raised in a very religious environment; my parents never bothered with God, y'know. But when I was 16, I felt like someone was out there, waiting to be discovered. So I went out, searching. I read the Bible, the Quran and then the Bhagvada Gita - and the Gita, it just hit home."

This statement, coming from a 25+ African-American male in an ISKCON temple in Boston, USA, triggers the discomfort I normally feel around overly-religious (by my standards, of course) people, when I first meet them. I am sitting to his left, and he isn't looking at me, for which I am glad. He concentrates on my friend, who is seated opposite him and is enthusiastically asking him questions about Lord Krishna and the movement. I am quiet, obediently finishing off the parsadam that has been generously offered to us. When the conversation allows it, I pass a random, light-hearted comment on Boston and our university life, which everyone responds to with a polite laugh before returning to discussions on scriptures and god.

Twenty minutes later, we have finished hearing the story of the ISKCON movement and tidbits from the Bhagvada Gita, which do nothing if not accentuate my feeling of ignorance and discomfort. The man reminds us that it is time for the aarti - which we weren't allowed to do earlier as the dieties were resting. We head downstairs and I hope this experience will not be too different from my previous ones at mandirs. I am unconfident, worried that I will do something improper and disrespectful.

I am in for a surprise.

There are initially four people in the room besides me - the young man, a Caucasian and my two friends. The African-American picks up a dhol and starts playing on it, singing a hymn of which the only words I can comprehend are "Rama" and "Krishna". He and the other man take two steps forward and two steps back, gently swaying to the beat of the dhol and their own voices. As the room fills with the sound of their hymn, my friends and I stand respectfully toward the side and I keep inching closer to the wall. It is a large, ornate room, but I feel like I cannot give these men the space they need to carry out their worship. Soon, I realise they don't really need that space; they don't really know we are there anymore.

By now, the beats have gotten louder, as have the men's voices. They are skipping forward and backwards, often with their eyes closed, but mostly with their eyes fixed on the elaborately-dressed idols in front of us. This is when an Indian joins them, trying very hard to match their worship with his awkward steps. I am right behind him and I feel like he is there to belong, rather than to worship. I see a thin, long comb sticking out of his back pocket (a telling symbol of small town India) and that makes me smile, right in the middle of a situation that is mostly uncomfortable. Their dancing suddenly picks up pace and once again, I go back to being fascinated and unsettled at the same time.

At the end of the twenty-minute service, they prostrate themselves on the ground and chant. When they are finished, they get up and smile at each other while I turn around to walk towards the door, trying to calm my quickened steps out of politeness. I feel them follow me.

Outside, they turn into people I can talk to again -- only I don't know what to say. The man smiles at us and wishes us a happy new year. "Everyone who comes here for the first time gets to take home a book," he says, smiling, pointing a book rack behind him. I walk over, asking him to recommend one, something basic that I can understand. So do my friends. Ten minutes later, they are seeing us out the door.

"There is a special program on Sunday. You must come," says the Indian. I smile and nod at him. "Hare Krishna," is his farewell to us. "Hare Krishna," say my friends. "Yeah, bye," I say stupidly, annoyed at the improriety of what I just said, yet knowing fully well that I will not be coming back.

They finally got us

They say this recent attack on Mumbai, and by extension, on India is different. They say that something in India has snapped this time around. The seemingly never-ending sadness has given way to red-hot anger. If that is true, good for us, I guess. I've always maintained that mad is better than miserable.

But there is another reason why it is different this time around. This is the first attack that has been successful. 

They don't want our property, our money, our houses, our wealth or even our lives. They want to break the very fabric that holds this country together. And I am ashamed to say that their perseverance has paid off. Our fabric is worn out, battered, coming off in threads.

Everywhere I go, people are playing the blame game - against Indian Muslims, against Pakistan, against Muslims in general, against Islam. My generation, whose hatred for Pakistan, if it all, has been limited to a passionate rivalry in cricket, is learning to hate. My generation, which was spared the torture of the Partition, now wants to kill. 

It talks of punishing those that hurt their country, without knowing for sure who its real enemies are. It talks of murder, blood and revenge, without blinking an eye. It talks of an eye for an eye, of a life for a life. And all I can think of is - This is what the terrorists wanted. They got you right where they want you.

I'm no advocate of ahinsa. I don't believe that will get us anywhere, at least not in this day and age. But I do believe in the value of a human life. What saddens me is the complete and blatant lack of humanity some Indians have been showing towards other Indians and towards our neighbour.  I agree that violence can help teach people a lesson or two but I also think it should be used wisely. And sparingly, if at all. And we should never forget that it was just a life gone bad, not a bad life to begin with. 

We need to think more about how we feel. Lest we become like those who hurt India.