As someone who grew up on Panchatantra fables and Enid Blyton’s fairytales, I have always been one for escapism. Being a Hindu, therefore, served me well as a child. Hindu culture is rooted in magic and mythology, rich in captivating stories that I couldn’t get enough of.
Nights spent at my Nani’s house were thrilling: my sister and I would jump into bed eagerly as Nani told us stories of little Krishna. As one narrative came to a close, we would ask for another, wanting nothing more than to be Krishna’s friend. Back at home, I would attempt to stay up all night meditating so that he would appear before me. I barely ever made it past midnight.
I was seven when Anand Sagar’s remake of the Ramayana launched, giving rise to a new obsession. At 9 pm every night, my eyes were glued to the television, and missing one episode inevitably led to hours of screaming and crying that my poor parents had to deal with. More than the show itself, I was in love with the characters of Rama and Sita — a scandalous foreshadowing of my impending bisexuality, now that I look back on it.
As I grew older, though, my relationship with religion began to change. It became harder and harder for me to wrap my head around the idea of devotion — how could a person place all their trust in someone they weren’t even sure existed? How could my grandmother spend so much time praying, cooking, fasting for a God that didn’t appreciate her? There were people who gave up their entire lives to protect a God who showed no sign of existence, people who took others’ lives to protect an invisible being.
At 14, Diwali prayers began to take toll on me, as feelings of deceitfulness and insincerity crept in.
I burst into tears as I told my mother I didn’t believe in God anymore. I was an atheist, and it didn’t feel good to let go of the comforting thought that there was someone up there looking out for us. My mother, in turn, told me that it wasn’t God that she cared about when she prayed. It was the fact that, through these prayers, our family got to spend more time together.
With that, I was suddenly free. Free of obligations and expectations, and all the stories I had grown up with.
So what if there was no higher power looking out for us? We were looking out for each other.
Not long after, I found myself entering a phase where I thought I was being pragmatic by being dismissive of everything Indian. Indian clothes were embarrassing to wear, Indian songs were not good enough to sing, and all religion was farce.
The rebel in me surfaced as I refused to fold my hands during prayers, or sing along to aartis. I’d somehow get away with not taking prasad at religious events, and scoff at tales like the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
“You know I don’t even believe in God,” I would tell my mother, before festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi and Diwali, and she would sigh.
A few months ago, while working on an assignment for college, I found myself pulled towards the Ramayana again. At first, I resisted — it was only the historical aspect of the story that I was interested in, but what if it turned into something more?
Also read: What Explains the Enduring Appeal of ‘Ramayan’ and ‘Mahabharat’?
Ultimately, I yielded. In the Ramayana, I found something like reassurance. Before I knew it, I was drowning in research papers and books studying the epic. Conversations at the dinner table with my family surrounded the Ramayana, and my friends were tired of my ten-minute long voice messages talking about the complexity of Sita.
It only took a few weeks before the research papers weren’t enough. This was a plot filled with emotions of every kind, and it felt wrong not to be seeing these emotions unfold as I read about them.
With a defeated sigh, one evening, I clicked on the YouTube app and typed in “Ramayana 2008”.
Over ten years later, I returned to a childhood obsession, only slightly more analytical and critical.
There was unanticipated comfort in coming back to a tale that had always been a part of my life — a story that I never even had to read to know, in a language that was mine. There is solace in the idea of black and white, good and evil, justice over darkness. Someone simple within me just wants to be rescued, and still needs elaborate chronicles like the Ramayana to believe in goodness, and let go of scepticism.
But at what point does an innocent interest in mythology turn into religious fanaticism?
Religion has always been a sensitive subject across India — all one has to do to remember this is open the newspaper.
Even if I wanted to, it feels wrong now, almost, to associate myself with any religion, after glimpsing at the destruction it can create. At its core, every religion has beautiful beliefs, but I have seen these beliefs turn to dust in the face of extremism.
My relationship with religion has developed waveringly in the last few years. I have respect for every religion, and an especial interest in the very culture I pushed away for so long.
But religion is powerful — every emotion it stirs is strong. It gives rise to as much love as hate, and I am as afraid of it as fascinated, forever holding it at an arm’s length.
My return to the Ramayana has strangely been one of the most unexpected outcomes of a year that was full of surprises. Days without watching at least one episode of the show have started to feel incomplete, and sleep only comes after the closing track of the show begins.
Whether this interest is purely in the tale that has captured millions, or whether I am slowly turning into my grandmother, only time will tell.
The agonising fear of being forgotten led Saachi Gupta to start writing at the age of six. Now the founder of international platform Push up Daisies, she hopes she has improved at least a little since then. She is a student at Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts, Mumbai.
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