Who is this God by the way...................

My earliest lessons on God were those that came to me on the Diwali night, when my family and I sat all together for the puja. It started with some bhajans and then we three kids sang prayers by reading them out from our school diaries. We had an aesthetically decorated mandir in our home where stood the idols of all Gods - Ram and Sita, Sri Krishan, Hanuman, Lord Buddha, Guru Nanakji, Lord Mahavir, Durga Maa, Swami Vivekanand along with others. But the grandest of all was that of Maa Kaali, standing tall for the clearest panorama. My mother is a bengali and so is her biasness for Maa Kaali. But that feeling never obstructed he from practicing polytheism. Even today she participates in cults of varios deities.

On the other side I have my Dad. Born in a family that firmly believes in Arya Samaj(a community that disparages the concept of idol worship and follows vedas as its rule book) has always been into the mode of praying to the God of Fire, and hence we have a havan every fortnight, where we read the Vedic hymns; My personal favourite being the Maha Mrityunjya Jaap - A hymn to avert deaths.

Fortunately to us , our Mom and Dad haven't been one of those fundamentalist who promotes their faith, forcefully, on others. We kids were always given an option to choose our sets of theologies. I really don't know how my two elder sisiters will start their extempo when the topic before them is God, I surely will have a tough time. So i took an endeavour to find out who is this He.

I started with Gita - the holy book of Hindus. It said Sri Krishna is the Supremo. He is the creater of this universe. Under his instructions only, star radiates, planet revoves, galaxies originate and the season cahnges. I began in the verses spoken by Lord Himself to Arjuna in the midst of the battle field of Mahabharat. This book began clearing the dark clouds from the sky of my mind about the identity of God, when suddenly I woke up in the morning to read in the front page of an english daily that wrote:
"Americans JOHN C. Mather and George F. Smooth have won the Noble Prize for the work that help cement the Big Bang Theory of how the univese was craeted and deeper understanding of the origin of stars and galaxies."
I closed the respected book and put it back in the shelf from where I had picked it up.

Then I chose Bible for revivalism. I started with Old Testament, The Genises. It revolved around the story of Adam and Eve, the first two homo sapiens of the planet earth( it actually helped me solve an old riddle that questioned, 'who came first- egg or the hen'). I don't blam King George IV(or V, whoever it was behind the rewriting of Bible), but i spent most of my time looking out for the meaning of those ancient greek words, rather than reading the book. So before I reached The Exodus, Icalled it quit and preffered to bequeath that 'vocabularily perfect' book. Sorry Jesus............................

Syed Lehsan Haider, a muslim friend of mine, came too late in my life else I would have surely read The Quran.And I shall not hesitate to say that I never attempted at Guru Granth Sahib. As Guru Nanakji Said," Speak only the truth, regardless of the consequences." Soon I came to a conclusion that these Holy Grail of different religion requires a lot more matured mind than what I had.

In the mean time, I met a friend of mine, Satya Didi(as I called her). She was 10 years elder to me and was a student of my Mom. She was Catholic. I still remember that night, when I had one of my usual stomache ache( which is due to an inborn defect with my pancreas, on the eve of my science exam. Satya Didi was there in my hose. Dad was out of town and Mom was worried. Satya Didi came to me and asked me to remove my shirt and vest and lie on the bed. So i did. She kept apiece of clothon my naked stomach, cloth that she claimed belonged to the Jesus. She kept her hand on it, closed her eyes and prayed. I still don't know whether it was the after-effect of Spazmo-Nil and Pudhin Hara or was it the magic of her prayers, my pain vanished suddenly. Next morning she gave me the same prayer in writing and asked me to read before every exam. I still have that prayer with me and soon I began believing that it was the miracle of that prayer that made me score exceptionally good marks in the exams that followed. Then a day came when she had to go back to her native village in Kerela. Next day to her departure my yet another result came out and to my astonishment this time I had performed miserably poor. I wondered what happened. A week later, Rakesh Roshan released his Sci-Fi film Koi.............Mil Gaya, in which when Jaadu,an alien goes back to his celestial space, all the powers that he had imparted to Rohit, a mentally and a physically weak boy, vanishes. I stopped believing in the miracle of that poem from that day onwards. I miss you Jaadu( read Satya Didi)...............

Most of my friends have one thing in common besides having me, majority of them share the same beliefs- more than a majority are jains. So i decided yet again to knock the doors of yet another religios shop. Jainism and Buddhism, both founded around the same period had common lessons. They both preached that God can only be found in the Nirvana. And Nirvana can be achieved by practicing certain philosphies of life like, karma, non-violence,etc. But then I found a flaw in the two. Jainism prohibitted me from havin tanduri chicken and mutton kababs and Buddhism outline a hippocricy that I couldn't stand for. Firstly it preaches the lesson of non-violence, but the followers of Buddhism in China, Japan, Korea eat everything from horses to cows and from snakes to lizards(yummy.....). So being a Maha'Jain'( actually a Mahajan). the two were not my cup of tea.

Did any one mentioned Din-e-Illahi, a religion started by empror Akbar that had few drops of every religion? I even went for that, but the manuscripts were preserved with ASI. Kunal Kohli, dirctor of hits like Fanaa, Hum Tum(and less known Mujhse Dosti Karogi) had to rub his shoes vigorously to convice ASI to shoot in Humayun's Tomb for three minutes of a song, and you expect them to give me the manuscripts just like that. Poor Akbar. He must be shivering in his grave. For the first time since its establishment, he founded atrue devotee of his religion, but all in vain now...................

I tried to follow the footsteps of all to find out God- Swami Vivekanand, Sri Aurobindo, Dayanand-Sarawati, and even the contemprory ones, Baba Ramdev and Aasa Ram Baapu. I pulled my thigh muscles while performing Ramdevji's yoga and even once choked my self. Since that day I have put a 'child lock' on the Asthaa Channel. As far as Aasa Ram Bapu ic concerned, I would rather check out Gold Souk In Gurgaon than check him out. Meditation proved a bit bebeficial to me, not in subtracting distance between me and Nirvana but between me and neend aana (feeling sleepy). I found a wonderful way of having asound sleep as whenever I sat to meditate ambience around profused unconcsiosness in me, and i fell asleep.

So weeks of ideosyncracy, I decided to stop my voyage in looking out for this creature called God. I was back to my normal routine. But this failure of not finding Him never made me an atheist. Even after all this I sat in front of Mandir on Diwali nights and I still was a very part of havans in my house. I simply became an apostle to my parents; That is the least you can do to see your family happy, especially when your parents have a hell different backgrounds( I have all sympathy for the kids of Shahrukh and Gauri Khan and the newly born Hrehaan Roshan). As I belived that only such acts of yours only can make your family happy and stand united .................
Wait did I said, happy. Yes, happiness......... and I struck Gold. I found God. I found who was he and where is he. He lives inside all of us, deep down somewhere in our heart. And what does He preaches? He preaches us the happiness. And how? Well happiness is a relative term, to someone, happiness lies in making mone, to others it lies in donating the same. To some sectoin of society happiness is in the pain that they give to themselves( like my mom doesn't eat or even drink drop of water on fridays and my Muslim friend Haider,does it by beating himself with chains in the Holy month of Ramzaan). My Jain friend find happiness in being kind to hens, fishes and goats. Desciples of Lord Shiva find the same in pouring litres of milk on Shivling everyday. Veer(s) and Zaara(s) of our generation find happiness in their loved ones. You see happiness is such a vague term and so is the diffencein the religions and the people following them. As one of the vedic hymns that we read says that God is like Air, can neither be seen nor heard and definately cannot be touched. You can only feel Him. When we feel happy, , we think so is our Lord with us. And when we feel sad, we think that our God is disappointed with us. So you see happiness is a state of mind and so is our image of our God.

So now the question before me, what makes me feel happy? Money, Fasting, Charity, Cars, Zaaras or Tanduri Chickens. I am on a new voyage now. And I was so stupid that I was finding Him out when he was already in ........................................


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