Dev and I had been desk partners for a year when our academic year for class X started in the July of 1980. He was as sober and introverted as ever, though not as excruciatingly restrained as he had earlier come across. There was usually a gentle smile on his face but his laughter never reached his eyes. He was curious about academics but showed little curiosity in the people around him. There was something bottled up inside him which never came out. He seemed happy keeping to himself, but was neither unfriendly nor unpopular in the class. He avoided confrontation, his face was still and his eyes were sunken and contrasted between sadness and an intensity with which he was searching for something. He was always happy to share with me whatever he knew about history and current affairs and sports and science and literature, but didn’t quite seem open to go beneath that layer and talk about his life.
He seemed simple at heart yet somewhat complicated in his thoughts. He spoke so well when he did in both languages, yet when he would come home, he would listen more to my parents and my cousins than talk himself, which he did only in short sentences. He never discussed girls in the way other boys would but did not look away whenever I brought up the topic, and with the most subtle of humour he gently changed the subject. He never bad-mouthed anyone but appeared not to like everyone either, his lips seemed to purse just a little whenever he encountered someone he didn’t fancy.
Often, I would see his face turned away, looking out of the window and away from the class in an intriguing mingle of thoughtful aloofness. It appeared to me that he could not lie nor was he comfortable saying no. He had mentioned to me the poetry and rendition of Gopaldas “Neeraj” which he had seen on Doordarshan twice and found mesmerising. He had loved reading Sunil Gavaskar’s autobiography Sunny Days, liked the Five Find-Outers mysteries by Enid Blyton, and intended to read Mahatma Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth after Boards. He used to enjoy the Phantom and Mandrake comics, and Amar Chitra Katha comics on stories from Indian history. He would write “Om” in Hindi in very small font at the top right corner of the examination answer sheets. But when I asked him if he believed in God, his reply was, “I am not sure”, and when I quizzed him on the reason why he then wrote a letter of prayer, he looked at me very intently and expressionlessly but did not answer my question.
For the compulsory vocational subject at that time referred to as Socially Useful Productive Work or SUPW, he had taken sculpture. He would never ask me for anything, and never refuse if I asked him to lend me a book or comic though he seemed a trifle uncomfortable in temporarily parting with Sunny Days. He, like a few others, had become quite tall and a newly-sprouting moustache completed the clean-cut face of Devavratt Pratap Rajvansh. In those early years, the only things I was certain about Dev were his passion for cricket, his growing fondness for Hindi poetry, and an arcane feeling inside me that I could trust him completely.
From prehistoric times till today majority of humankind has held some belief or the other which has helped them relate to each other and to society, to nature, to the immense universe and which has attempted to provide an answer to the eternal mystery of death, and life after death. In our times, this belief system has been called religion. Despite their divisive nature at the global level, religions old and new have survived thousands of years, reflecting man’s deep need for God. Dev and I and about 80 per cent of India of our time were born Hindu. My father would tell me of Hinduism as one of the oldest religions whose origins went back over 6000 years to the time when the Vedas were written. The four Vedas written in Sanskrit contain a body of knowledge that the wise sages of that time revealed upon meditation in the form of hymns and prayers and rituals. “Rig Veda is the oldest known book in the world and its opening shloka – ‘agni meele purohitam’ – in reverence of the fire that dispels darkness and gives warmth is the very first verse of the most ancient text known to mankind”, said my father. From the Vedic tradition emerged Hinduism, also referred to as Sanatana Dharma or the eternal law. Contained in the Vedas are the 108 Upanishads where the essential principles of Hinduism reside.
I grew up understanding Hinduism as pluralistic and liberal which taught that there are various paths to truth, different ways to seek omnipotent God, where shastrath or debate was encouraged and there was freedom to question, where time is believed to move in four great cycles or yugas, each of millions of years, where there is harmony and order in the universe with which human beings can align by performing simple pujas and where human life itself has four goals i.e. dharma or rightful duties, artha or working for livelihood and prosperity, kama or human desires and moksha that is salvation and liberation from the cycle of birth and death.
Death is nothing but the end of the physical body for the soul is everlasting and part of the Supreme Being. Moksha can be attained through the right karma or actions in one’s lifetime and also through practice of Yoga. Accordingly, ideal human life is divided into four phases or ashrams of 25 years each beginning with brahmacharya or student life, followed by grihastha or life of a householder, then vanaprastha or age of retirement and withdrawal, and finally sannyasa or renunciation.
Our sacred texts are either Shruti which is “heard directly from God” and is the heart-centre of Hinduism, or Smriti which is remembered and can be attributed to an author. Our main scriptures are the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita which are all Shruti and the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas which are the Smritis. Smritis are the narratives and stories through which Shruti comes alive! These scriptures contain the righteous way of life, the moral fabric of society, codes of conduct and philosophy, theology, yoga and puja. Intrinsic to them are the concepts of atma or spirit and brahman or the essence of creation. Little did Dev or I know then that the “Om” he was writing on examination answer sheets is the most sacred mantra of Hinduism, it is the eternal sound within which all sounds reside, which represents universal energy or God itself. In recent times I heard of NASA’s satellites capturing vibrations of the solar system and those vibrations seem to produce a sound similar to “Om”!
Excerpted with permission from Tempest on River Silent, Sandeep Khanna, Olive Turtle/Niyogi Books.
