By Ismat Ara
04/NOV/2020
My mother
was teaching me to recite “Bismillah” – meaning “In the name of Allah,” a basic
prayer Muslims say at the beginning of almost everything – when the invitation
came. It was not a phone call or a written invite, Seema didi, our next-door
neighbour, came herself to take me. It was an off day for my father, and he was
working on his laptop, sitting next to us in our one-room apartment.
Seema's mother holding the author in her
arms. Photo: Ismat Ara
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My parents
knew they could not say no to Seema Didi, a young woman of about 20, lively and
persistent. My mother closed the Amma Para, a children’s guide to the Arabic
alphabet and Quran, and got up to welcome Seema didi. Without wasting any time,
a decked-up Seema didi announced, “Lakshmi puja hai aaj, Ismat ko bhej dijiye
(Lakshmi puja is about to begin, please send Ismat to our house).”
I was four
years old, and hand been summoned to a Lakshmi puja, a Hindu prayer being held
in Kapashera, a Hindu-majority area near Gurgaon (now Gurugram), Haryana.
My mother
picked out my best frock, dressed me up, put a red Bindi on my forehead and
dropped me next door, where the puja was being conducted. “When you went and
sat for the puja, you said Bismillah
before starting with the Bhajan – you used to always mix up these things,” she
tells me now.
I sat for
some time in the puja, singing chants. Finally, after the puja was over, I was
given a thali, a plate, and asked to roam around the neighbourhood, seeking
coins of Re 1 and Rs 2 from neighbouring houses as “Dakshina” – a big amount for me that time, because it would buy me
many Kismi toffees from the nearby shops. I was, like other young girls,
treated like an avatar of Goddess Lakshmi, in whose honour the puja was
conducted. Over the years that we lived in that neighbourhood, it became
customary for me to sit for pujas, especially for Lakshmi puja.
But there
was a catch.
Sitting in
front of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, after the puja was over, I would often put
my two little hands together and when everybody else closed their eyes to pray
with their joined hands, I would make Dua. My palms would be facing me, only
half folded. It was an obvious result of mixed teachings. Ritu ki mummy (Ritu’s
mother) would read me passages from the Gita and other Hindu scriptures, while
I picked up the dua gesture from seeing people in my family offer Namaz.
The
four-year-old me could hardly tell the difference.
Was it a
crime I was committing? Or even worse, was it a sin? After Faisal Khan, an
activist from the organisation Khudai Khidmatgar was recently arrested for
offering namaz in a temple compound in Mathura, these thoughts became
inevitable.
My parents
now tell me that for a brief moment after each puja, when I returned from, they
would be worried that I will lose out on Islamic practices such as Namaz or
fasting during Ramzan. I was more comfortable saying Namaste or “Ram Ram,” as
was the custom in Kapasehra, than Salam
as a child, they tell me. And this did alarm my parents a little. But Ritu ki
mummy loved me immensely and said that it was mandatory that I be part of their
pujas, because I brought “life” into their house, and that goddesses loved
little girls.
Me playing holi, while Seema didi looks
at me, smiling. Photo: Ismat Ara
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The
community of Jatts and Gujjars dominating the area had an unstated rule that my
parents understood very well: no non-vegetarian food. Besides a tailor who
lived a few kilometres away, ours was the only Muslim family in the locality.
Ritu ki mummy, who shared her shaam ki chai (evening tea) strictly at 4 pm with
my mother every day, would often tell her, “Eat chicken if you want to. We will
not tell anybody. Just make sure you wash everything properly later and don’t
leave any traces behind.”
Even though
my parents did not dare cook non-vegetarian food out of fear of upsetting our
Hindu neighbours, it was still a nice gesture on her part, they say. The
acceptance of our Muslim-ness and non-vegetarian-ness by our immediate
neighbours, Ritu’s mother and Seema’s mother, and our cautiousness meant that
we had no reason to worry, even though it was the same year that communal riots
had occurred in Gujarat.
However,
there was one incident that my mother recalls that made her question her
optimism. A young me had accidentally almost cut off Ritu’s mother’s finger,
which was stuck in the door when I arrived and pushed it – resulting in a lot
of blood.
For days,
my mother was not informed of my little misadventure. After about a week, Ritu
casually mentioned the incident to my mother. My mother, alarmed, later had a
conversation with my father. “We are adults, we can mould our behaviour to become
non-threatening to the neighbours. What about her? She is a kid; she doesn’t
know how to act…what if something like this happens again and triggers a fight?
It will become about our religion, ultimately.”
Our room in Gurugram. Photo: Ismat Ara
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However,
these thoughts were never permanent, nor were the fears. They would come and
go. With each festival, and there were ample Hindu festivals celebrated, we
would dress up in bright colours and I would continue sitting for pujas.
On a
regular day, my mother’s evening chai would be at Ritu’s house, with her
mother. They would sit for hours, discussing TV serials, recipes and their
daughters’ future weddings. On some days, my mother would have two cups of tea
because it was also customary to have tea at Seema didi’s house.
What amuses
me, however, is how these dynamics have changed now. My mother, who had left me
in Seema’s mother’s care for eight straight days because she had to undergo a
surgery, now says she is unsure that she would do the same thing today. “She
would even wash your potty, you were only three at the time,” she recalls.
To sit in a
puja and make dua will remain one of my fondest childhood memories and one of
the most beautiful symbols of communal harmony for me. Do I deserve to be
arrested too?
Original Headline: Making Dua in a Hindu
Household, or My Earliest Memories of a Secular India
Source: The Wire
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/to-sit-puja-make-dua/d/123379
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