When I was little, I’d say to mummy ‘I want to hug Holi’ but honestly I wanted to hug Diwali more. I still do. There is nothing that makes me as happy as lamps and lights. The idea of a huge community agreeing to celebrate a make-believe happy incident EVERY year of their lives is a close second. My mother is the only one who would allow me such feelings of wanting to hug non-things. She has always maintained that though you cannot hug panipuri, the intention matters.
Every morning of each of these festivals, she would wake me up a little earlier than usual, to have me be a part of poojas, go to temples, and meet the people that are to be met during festivals, this atheist mother of mine. So when she woke me up on Dusshera, to give me a brief summary of the pooja to be performed, to tell me the story of the Pandavas picking their tools back from the tree, while she chanted instructions to my father, I wondered why she wanted her atheistic daughter to know, in a way she can replicate these rituals when she did not bother to pressurize her into bathing or when she refused to buy the pooja leaves for environmental harm? Why must we be the atheists that participate in poojas and go to temples? And if we do, why wasn’t I allowed to taste the blessed ash of essence stick like the others? Are we half-assing atheism? I asked her.
So at these poojas, in the temples, eating sweets at relatives’ homes, my lady tells me about the architecture of temples, of superpowers of different gods, and translates bhajans and songs, she makes folklore more dramatic and relate-able at the same time, and explains the spirit of things we do without causing harm. When she is done, she turns back to a conversation that she is having with the house-help. Why is Moharam celebrated, she wants to know. No, what did the people do that you celebrate and remember? What do you people cook that day, she asks. She tells me I never have to do anything I do not believe in, participate for the spirit maybe, or not, but she makes clear that there is no option to knowing what people believe in. And she says before she leaves, you don’t have to agree with someone to be respectful.