The Other

As a child I grew up in a strangely eclectic religious atmosphere. My parents and I lived with my uncles and aunts as a large, extended family. Our household deity from several generations was Krishna. On special occasions such as on my grandfather’s death anniversary or on Janmashtami, Krishna’s birthday, my youngest uncle who was a staunch Vaishnava organized devotional concerts in our house. Big, hefty men clad in white dhotis and kurtas, some with cymbals and others with khols 
( a two headed drum held horizontally while playing)  strapped around their necks and hanging down to their midriffs, gathered on our terrace. At first they sat in a circle and sang. As the night deepened and the singing got more fervent, they rose to their feet and began dancing as well. My father and uncles joined in, the music and dancing rose to a pitch of excitement and ended with a shower of exclamations , “Hari! Hari!” This was followed by the Vaishnavas throwing handfuls of sugar candies in the air which I along with other children scuttled to gather.My father though had strayed from the flock. He had become the follower of a Bengali freedom-fighter turned philosopher-saint, settled in Pondicherry, and a “French woman,” my relatives muttered amongst themselves, with revolutionary ideas on education, marriage, society and gender equality.  

I was sent to a school run by nuns where every week we went to the chapel and read colourfully illustrated books on the miracles wrought by Christ. I was particularly attracted to the picture of a gentle, bearded Christ feeding a small, fluffy lamb.There was no contradiction in all this. I bathed in the holy soup of Krishna, Jesus, Sri Aurobindo, and felt safe and protected.

There was also a Muslim servant called Chamatkar which means wonderful. Chamatkar was old. He had a white, longish beard. His face was like soft, crumpled paper with bright, laughing eyes . He always wore a dirty, white skull cap and a lungi with blue and white checks. He often carried me in his arms and the elders in the house teased me by saying, “When you grow up we will marry you to Chamatkar.” Chamatkar too found this funny and when I was unbearable, pulling his beard or wanting to wear his skull cup, he would threaten me with the same fate. I knew he had a wife but he lived alone in our house on the ground floor in a damp room with a single window. Like all devout Muslims he prayed five times a  day. I knew I was not supposed to disturb him then, but when I could I peeked in through the window to watch him spread his prayer mat, wash his feet and hands and kneel down to pray. This ritual of withdrawal into a private world which had nothing to do with the one which surrounded him, fascinated me.I don’t know if I asked him about his beliefs, maybe I refrained unconsciously because I knew there was an invisible barrier to be respected. But I do not think that I was consciously aware of the fact that he was the other.

As I grew up the outline of the others grew clearer, all those who believed in other divinities than the community I belonged to, were the others, all those whose financial and social status was inferior to ours were the others, all those whose skin colour and physical features were different than our own were the others.  My father later sent me to a school founded on the teachings of his gurus and there all those who did not belong to the same line of belief were the others. So in fact we were surrounded by others and had to define our identity by distinguishing ourselves from the others. All this happened during my teen years. And it was natural to lose the innocence of my childhood and define my self by taking into account  existing boundaries. But with growing awareness of these boundaries was also a growing revolt against them.  During my childhood the devotion that was spontaneous became fraught with obstacles. The ethical rigidity of  Rama repelled me, the elitism and intellectual snobbery of my education suffocated me, the belief of middle class families of which my family was a part, that all those who are poorer are also dirtier, less intelligent and less honest  than they,  infuriated me. I wanted a way out. I could not say to hell with religion and become a Marxist because I was fed on belief along with my mother’s milk, but accepting it was like entering into a room, locking myself in, and throwing away the key. I wanted a way out, whereby my atavistic tendencies and my personal beliefs could find a meeting ground, where poetry and philosophy fused, where humanity and divinity walked hand in hand.

Kabir showed me the way. A boyfriend who walked on the margins of heresy himself gifted me a tattered translation of Kabir’s poems translated into English by Tagore. Wallowing in a morass of confusion and disillusionment where the heaven that I had been promised had turned out to be a country divided into mined frontiers, the poems touched my being with their simplicity and courage.

... It’s just as well my prayer beads scattered

I’m free of all that holy chatter!

The burden of my head is gone.

or

Your words are sweet as sugar

Your deeds are poisoned bread.

Quit the words, walk the talk.

   Turn the poison to nectar.

or

          Some say the lord dwells in heaven.

Some say in the land of holy cows.

         Some say in the land of Shiva.

In every age they set up their shops!

                                                             Do what you must, you seekers!

There are so many more. I could keep on quoting.   Here was a voice which went directly to my heart, where all that created The Other was knocked down with frightening ease and nonchalance, mosques, temples, the Gita, the Koran, the rich, the poor and what remained was not emptiness but an infinite vastness.

So Kabir made me reconcile myself with form by being supremely irreverent to it. His words gave me the courage to be radical because he had by abandoning everything found all. The world was made whole again, the Other only an illusion.

Arunima Choudhury