A balancing act

I am a stickler for order and routine. It does not mean I am always neat and tidy. I just do not tolerate the untidiness of others. Which makes me one helluva nag – blind to the mess that I make but sensitive like a rotten tooth to everyone else’s. I fidget and continually need my hands to be busy all the time. We are human beings not human doings my sister tells me – I ask her who said this – she says I just did. I am impressed. It makes sense. But what are we if not the sum of our actions I ask myself often.  Am I the sum of only my transgressions (Wow! What a big word!) I guess this goes back to saying The Lord’s Prayer “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us” – It is no feat of sharp memory- just muscle and cartilage cranking out the words with no hesitation. There was a rhythm to that – even the most inattentive amongst us learnt The Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 ^. There was a rhythm to the way we recited it and I was good at this. Psalms in the morning and Shlokas in the evening not knowing what God I was bowing to. I did not care – it was a routine- rituals that centred my days. A delicate balance to strike in an orthodox Brahmin household. I did not know it then cos I was not yet afflicted with the ‘malady of overthinking’.

Mark Tully’s book India’s unending journey – Finding balance in the time of change was published in the summer of 2007. This was a time when for me when major career shifts were afoot – struggling to find purpose and identity having moved away from real doctoring I was struggling to balance being mother, wife, friend and ‘working woman’. I just knew I had to be en pointe for my son who was entering his teenage years at a time when I was walking on two left feet.

Tully Sahab came to British Council in Kolkata to talk about his book and Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi was in conversation with him. It is an evening etched in my mind in indelible ink as is his signature on my copy of the book.  It is a book in which he speaks of his early education in theology which he abandons and comes to India the country of his birth and completely by chance is driven to broadcasting as it was called then and rose to become the Chief of Bureau for the BBC in New Delhi.    Tully Sahab returned to his alma mater Marlborough College many years later and attended a prayer service in the chapel. In a school which emphasised rational thought, the evensong on Sundays struck an opposite note of sorts “when it seemed to me that there might be comprehension beyond reason” and how he began to understand the strange paradox of liturgy. “To me it is like poetry – it inspires rather than explains. It is like a mantra too, a permanent and always reliable source of comfort and strength.’ I remember being deeply struck by this. “This is so deeply true even for me” I wrote in the margins of the book. How does a person who is a rational thinking being take comfort in that which is not fully intelligible?

I had taught my son to look at his open palms as he would into a mirror and recite the verse which says that “the Goddesses of wealth and learning Lakshmi Saraswathi and the all-powerful Gowri all reside in my hands and I see them the first thing every morning.”^[i] I wanted to instil a ritual for him to begin his day – did I dwell daily on the words? Did he even ask me what it meant? Neither. But it was a ritual till reason and question intervened. Then he stopped saying it – would wait till I woke him up with me reciting it and it continued to be the one thing that remained constant even as he outgrew me in every way and went on to boarding school.  As I hug him now to bid goodbye in airports, I find the mantra playing in my head – the ritual has struck deep roots. Or is it muscle memory again? – my lips know the movements. It has come so far from what it was meant to be - it was quietly questioned; it could have been abandoned but what it came to be changed even as it was really the one thing that remained the same. If I had forced it upon him, it would have been unpleasant for both of us – I let it go but not quite. Was this a form of balance?

There was a story I was told as a child- that there are 2 men (always men – I did not know to ask then) one on each of my shoulders- the one on the left is weighing my bad deeds and the one on the right my good deeds. I was never told how to find equilibrium or who would hold the weighing scale and when – that there was someone looking was expected to be deterrent enough. Like making a to do list and not needing to look at it. Once written down it gets done -this sure does ring a true note for all of us who seek refuge in words.  I know now that with each passing year my shoulders are nice and square as are my hips – Hips don’t lie remember, neither does my Yoga teacher I have just been told that my alignments are good.  But I know I must not become complacent; it is a fine balance. I seek strength and comfort with the chants morning and evening and hope to find balance in an India that I am afraid is losing hers. Or perhaps like Tully Sahab best said it is “an unending journey.”

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^[i] karāgre vasate lakṣmīḥ karamadhye sarasvatī ।
karamūle sadaa Gowri prabhāte karadarśanam