It’s 43°C in Delhi-NCR, and the mind turns to holiday encounters as a diversion. I remember a chatty pavement bookseller I met in Bali. “I think democracy is rubbish,” declared the spike-haired, sharp-eyed young man without a preamble. “Oh God,” I muttered distractedly, looking to choose a secondhand book for holiday reading, since I’d already raced through the ones I’d brought along.
“Talk to me!” he said, pulling out a plastic chair and offering me a clove-scented ‘Sampoorna’ cigarette that I politely declined, which he then lit for himself. “Do you have an attention problem?” I said mildly, “Please talk to the Australian tourists, I’d just like to buy a book.”
“Talk to me!” he insisted. “You’re from India, aren’t you? I don’t meet many Indians. What do you think about democracy? What do you think about God? I’m Muslim, what are you?”
Clearly there was no escape except to leave, and I so wanted to look at the books. I extracted a yet-unread Joanna Trollope title lurking between the best-sellers and was pleased to spot Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and, God bless us all, Malgudi Days. Also, something promisingly titled, The Revenge of the Middle-aged Woman, except that I wasn’t interested. Not when I’d gone snorkelling, explored Borobudur, scampered up and down green Indonesian hillsides and cooled off in boulder-strewn rivers that looked like our Betwa and Shipra.
“I’m from Sumatra,” he announced, which got my attention because of Rajendra Chola’s navy going there to school King Vijayatunga, who was harassing the Chettiars in their China trade. So I set the book aside, sat down, and really looked at him.
“Why do you have a long, straight nose?” he demanded, “Why is mine flat?” “I don’t know those answers,” I said, “Why do you think of democracy badly?” “Does it make life better for the poor?” he said belligerently, but I was not in the mood to argue. “Why do you want to know my religion?” I asked in return. “Everybody is fighting about religion. What do you think?” he said. “I think it’s stupid to fight,” I replied, “I’m sure God doesn’t approve of it.” He shot me a keen look. “And you’re Hindu?” he asked. “Yes. Do you think Almighty God dislikes me for a different way of praying?” I laughed. “Certainly not!” he exclaimed and I rose to leave.
“Twenty thousand rupiah only,” he grinned (around ₹100), handing back The Best of Friends by Joanna Trollope with a flourish. “Suksma,” I said, Balinese for “thank you”. “Om Swasti Astu,” he said, palms together, meaning “May God keep you well”, which is actually the Balinese greeting, not goodbye, and we parted cordially in a haze of clove that rang with shared ancestral echoes.
I got another jolt of awareness about ambivalence in faith while holidaying in Goa. Strolling around Mapusa, I passed a church dedicated to the Madonna and was told she was a ‘miracle lady’, as Hindus speak of Kanchi Kamakshi. But in the next breath, my local informant spoke disparagingly of some religious practices as ‘superstition’.
A memory kicked in of someone else’s words, from Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’, Part One, Act Three, Scene One:
Hotspur: “I cannot choose/sometimes he angers me,/With telling me of the mould warp and the ant,/Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,/And of a dragon and a finless fish,/A clip-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven,/A couching lion and a ramping cat,/And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff/As puts me from my faith.”
And by and by, the counter-argument goes like this:
Mortimer: “In faith, he is a worthy gentleman/Exceedingly well read and profited/In strange concealments, valiant as a lion/And as wondrous affable and as bountiful /As the mines of India.”
Don’t these medieval words put it rather well that even if beliefs differ, it’s character that counts?
Moreover, cultural adherence coded by centuries is hard to eliminate and why should we, when there are many inspiring stories to learn from? Of course, we have to understand them first.
A Chinese tale I like in this regard concerns Huineng, 617-713 CE, who stands ten feet tall in Zen Buddhism as the Sixth Patriarch of Ch’an (Chinese Zen). It’s said he was an illiterate woodcutter who was granted enlightenment in a single flash. Xuanzang, who came to India and stayed in Nalanda for five years, was 15 years older and both lived in the Tang period, the golden age of Chinese culture. Thomas Cleary of Harvard, who translated many Zen classics, did the first English version of Huineng’s own sutra and his commentary on the Hiraka (Diamond) Sutra, back in 1998.
Alas, Huineng had to escape to the mountains from jealous people. Many seekers went looking for him there, including ‘Fa-Ta, a man from Hongzhou’, who had left home at age seven and learnt the Lotus Sutra by heart. He bowed to Huineng without his head touching the ground.
“This is not like bowing at all, what have you learnt?” chided Huineng. “I’ve recited the Lotus Sutra 3,000 times,” said Fa-Ta proudly.“Even 10,000 times without understanding is useless. ‘Fa-Ta’ means ‘Arrival at Truth’. But have you ever arrived at Truth (Ta-Fa)?” asked the Master. The mistaken seeker realised that knowing without understanding had no value.
I rejoice about Valmiki and Vyasa, who left tonnes of spiritual advice disguised as interesting stories that each generation has to understand and pass on with joyful awareness. I wish I could share my favourites with that candid bookseller in Bali.
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)