ROOTS

There is a time and place for everything. I believe that much more today. My recent visit to the place where my father was born was a visit that I had thought of many a times over the last 40 years but never really made it happen. Even though I was so close, just an hour flight from Mumbai to Cochin and then 3 hours by road to Pallakad district in Kerala.

Last month, that is November of 2017, I did the journey. Why? What made me finally undertake that trip. Over the last couple of months I heard a few friends and my own aunts talk about visiting their family temple. That made me wonder how come we have never visited our temple or even know of it. I don’t really believe in the rules set down by religion. I don’t scoff them but neither do I follow them strictly. In our Hindu culture it is said that one must make a visit to the family temple at least once in a year. I never paid attention to that ruling. Many a times a forced act to comply with norms does not work for me. One must do it with a sense of understanding and reverence. That had not come for me.

This time something inside me kept telling me to go and visit my family temple, so far as waking me up in the middle of the night and asking why I have not done it. So I set out to find my family temple. Since there was no male sibling we knew of from my father’s side, nobody knew which one was our family temple. Women follow their husband’s family temple. Since they married young, my father’s sisters’ family did not remember which temple they might have visited when they were young. The reason for not knowing also is that the family moved from Manjapara district to Trichur in Pallakad when the children were very young. So I don’t even know if my Dad visited his family temple though he believed in a lot of rituals, so I presume he must have.

Luckily my cousin brother went asking and then found out. And again luckily he was making a trip to Kerala and said he would take me to our family temple.

Visiting the temple was my first priority but that includes understanding my roots. When I look back I always wonder why in 40 years  I never did it. And why now. But there are no answers. The calling must come.

I visited the temples around where my father and his parents lived and saw the house where perhaps my father was born. It is so calming to go to a village which makes you feel like your past home. You realise the reason behind certain rituals that your parents followed because they were inculcated in them from a young age.

One major one was going to the temple and following a lot of rituals at home which my father did follow at our home in Mumbai and so did my mother’s family.

Communities are formed with the Temple as a focal point. In Kerala, and I realise now in many communities, whether it is the Church or Mosque, it becomes a place for people to meet, to take part in festivals, to do good things for the temple or Church or Mosque and the surrounding area, to spend a large part of their lives and for many nowadays, their retired lives in service of the holy institution.

I heard so many stories when I was there of people who are living in Mumbai and have their roots in villages in Kerala (some still have their parents living there), doing so much for their village temple and their family temple  (both are different). Many retired people have gone back from cities to their villages and devoting their time to temple activities.

Today city bred people who have no connections to their roots are very far away from all this mindset. Hence for them, many a times, all this is a waste of time. That can be a major reason why village temples may go neglected in the future as perhaps has happened to churches worldwide.

Talking of churches, few months back I read Mitch Albom’s true story ‘Have a little faith’. It talks about a 83 year old rabbi and how his life revolves around the church and how young Albom who left his faith far behind, comes back to understanding what faith is all about. I felt a similar feeling when I visited the villages in Kerala.

Mitch in his story observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival .The story talks about what a daily ritual of going to the church means to the Rabbi and to many others. A similar ritual that perhaps every religion follows.

I seem to have gone far away in my notes in merely saying that I went searching for my family temple. But what I do feel now is the roots of every religion is the same. Just like the roots of all the trees are similar, only different in texture and thickness. Similar roots give birth to different trees and flowers. The same is for religion. The roots are similar, only the faiths are different. So whatever religion we come from, there is a underlying faith in a spiritual power that binds people and communities together.

If we leave that far behind and believe that any form of faith is stupid, we grow without our roots and it is quite evident then that there is a life break down faster than expected.