Introduction

Also, what am I doing here?

I’ve mulled over starting this column for several years now. Really, ever since I got married and had children my husband and I have struggled to find a comfortable way to teach our kids about God. We’ve also never found our spiritual community. As a kid, I had always been exposed to Hindu mythology through comic books (Amar Chitra Katha, anyone?), epic television series, and stories told and re-told by my parents and grandparents. Attending temple was rare but we went often enough to know the basics - take off your shoes, adopt the prayerful pose (hands folded, eyes close for a few minutes), recite whatever mantra you know, swift swoop of the hands up and over the head for the aarti blessing, accept prasadam with your right hand, drop a donation in a box, good to go find your shoes.

Our parents tried to supplement our learning in various ways. Once, a priest visited our town and offered to speak with us children briefly. I say children when we were really adolescents and pre-teens looking for a debate. Skeptical, first-generation Hindu-American teens + priest recently from India with limited English language fluency = frustration on both sides. Another time, I was sent to a Hindu religious camp in the Poconos for 2 weeks. I learned that I loved camp - I loved meeting so many kids from different parts of the country. I love sleeping in a bunk bed. I loved the obstacle courses and nature hikes. I had a crush on a high school boy who probably had no clue who I was. A boy (who I wish had no clue who I was) had a crush on me. I came home with a thick book of prayers, mantras, and camp songs that I read many times after. I also came away with the realization that I wasn’t alone in my beliefs. I may have been the only one in my 5th grade class that prayed to an elephant-headed god, but I wasn’t the only one in the world. In fact, I thought, A TON of people think this elephant-headed god is a big deal. And I agreed.

All in all, I had a pretty good impression of Hinduism despite the name-calling, teasing, and “saving” attempted by well-intentioned evangelical classmates (i.e., everyone). Given that I was told I was “going to hell” for “not being saved” at the age of 7, I went to my parents for explanations about our religion. As I got older, learning about my religion had nothing to do with spirituality or inner peace. It was a survival strategy. How was I supposed to hold my own when people made fun of Ganesha? You know the saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em…” Hell, no way was I joining these folks.

Thankfully, by high school, the atheists came out of the closet. There were a few Buddhists and Wiccans that emerged too, which was super helpful in taking the pressure off me. At least I wouldn’t be going to hell alone. In all honesty, I had developed a genuine interest in Hindu philosophy after reading Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions and the English translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Christopher Isherwood. Smith’s introduction to Hinduism is written so simply that to try and summarize it here would make it more complicated. I highly recommend it.

Suffice it to say, the more questions I posed, about life, death, and the purpose of existence seemed have been posed already by Hindu intellectuals before me. The answers and explanations weren’t always clear or easy, but I found the answers to problems I was facing now. I found a way to preserve my true self in the face of racism and religious harassment. I felt strengthened, not by faith, but by writings and teachings that I found rational and logical. The Hinduism that I learned about during that time became an invisible support to me in my while I tried to find myself. Faith came much, much later.

Sometimes, though, my form of Hinduism wasn’t really better than the Christianity of the evangelicals. When I went off to college, I found the Hare Krishna followers that gathered daily on the campus green to be imposters and cultish. I refused to donate to them or eat their freshly made (and free) rice and daal because they didn’t fit my standard of a real Hindu. I took up yoga at the student rec center. The yoga instructor was a deeply spiritual White woman who eventually adopted a Hindu name and moved to Hawaii to further her yoga practice. Before she left, I had been converted to a yoga enthusiast, practicing daily, following her asana routine exactly. I was so smitten with her approach that I refused to follow instructions of the substitute yoga instructors. I was quite physically flexible, but not in other ways. Did I mention the food was free and I still refused??

I’ve taken breaks from my “religiousness.” I rarely pray. I don’t keep track of the Hindu calendar. I routinely miss important dates like Dussehra and Ganesh Chathurthi. At other times, I watch Gita lectures daily and meditate on spiritual questions multiple times a week. My conversations with my kids often go something like this:

Me: Today was Dussehra. (as we eat dinner)

Kids: Oh what is that?

Me: Dussehra was the day that Goddess Durga defeated the demon Mahishasura. In other parts of India, Dussehra celebrates Rama defeating Ravana.

Kids: Oh, neat.

The thing is, either of those stories is pretty epic. In my rote explanation I have somehow made them as exciting as reading a microwave oven manual. And it’s too many conversations like that that have left me searching for ways to bring these stories to life for my kids. It’s not enough to simply relate these stories at the dinner table. Sure, there are plenty of poorly animated YouTube videos on it (we’ve already gone down that wormhole and somehow we always end up at Choo Choo TV or KidzBop). Living in a major metropolitan city with a big Hindu community, you would think it would be easy to find a temple or Bal Vihar class to join. It’s true, there are many places we could go, and yet my husband and I have not found a community that shares our vision of religious education for children much less adults.

As with any immigrant community, the temple becomes a place not only for religious worship, but a connection to the Motherland and Her traditions, language, and customs. Temple is not only the place to pray, but to teach children their native language and values associated with their culture. But this context isn’t me anymore and neither is it my husband. The scary thing (for me) is, culturally…we’re not really Indian anymore.

So who are we? We are Hindus that really don’t like wearing bindhis. We are American, not Indian. We are not White. We are dog owners. We don’t wear shoes in the house. We eat beef. Our dog eats beef. We believe vegetarianism is probably the better choice and may eventually get there. We believe children should respect their parents. We believe education, education, education. We don’t pray, we meditate. Honest admission: right now our puja room (read: closet) is being used as a storage closet so if you want to pray, you need to crane your neck in to get a good view of God. If you try to put a leg in you may hit it on a side table. We believe books are sacred and should be treated as such. We may go weeks without eating Indian food. We send our kids to Kumon but we joke that it may end up sending our kids to therapy later in life. We believe in acknowledging mental health issues rather than brushing them under the rug. We are LGBTQ+ allies with LGBTQ+ family. We marched to demand an end to gun violence in schools. We believe in helping our neighbors and helping those in need, including women in need of abortions. We believe Hinduism is a fountain of knowledge worth teaching our children. We believe faith can weather any storm. We are looking for a community that embraces all this, rather than trying to change us.

So what am I doing here? I suppose I’m trying to create that community through this space. I want to explain how Hinduism has impacted my life and how I’ve interpreted different passages and stories to be relevant in my life.

More importantly, I want to be a source of information for that day you realize that it’s the first night of Navratri and your kid asks you what it means and you have to jump on the internet to find out. And I want to do it in a way that makes you and your kids interested in learning more. Naturally, that means getting into some scripture, mythology, and philosophy, not to preach but to understand. It may involve learning how to make laddoos, but probably not.