World Religions 101

I woke up this morning with a mosquito bite on the tip of three fingers in a row. Apparently, I am going to have to bust out the tennis racket of death a bit more!

One of the things I knew about India before I came was that religion is an important part of life here and that there are many different kinds. Hinduism is the most prevalent but there are pockets of Buddhist, Islamic, Jainist, and Christian communities throughout the country (along with a myriad of others). Delhi, being the capital, has a little bit of everything it seems. We have a new Hindu temple being built less than a quarter of a mile from our house on one corner and on another corner is a Sikh temple that has people coming in and out of it all day. They also have music all the time that we can hear from our house so it gives the neighborhood the feeling of being at the beginning of a movie where they are trying to emphasize that this is the Middle East so they show a man on a tower singing to call everyone to prayer. You know what I mean? It's kind of cool. What I have learned about Sikhism is very interesting to me. They believe in one god and that all men are equal before him. At their Golden Temple in Punjab they serve free meals to anyone of any religion that comes to the temple. The belief is not that this will make the poor feel better about themselves, but that the rich will be more humble. I think that's a smart way of handling things.

The Golden Temple

As Hinduism is the major religion here you see its religious iconography everywhere. To be honest, it reminds me a lot of Argentina with the pictures and statues of saints everywhere. Here, of course, it is the multiple gods and goddesses that are represented. I was intrigued when I was at Nathan's office and noticed that as you come downstairs to his office there is a carving of Ganesh, the god with the elephant head. You certainly wouldn't see that at home!

I wanted to know more about him because you see his image everywhere (along with the swastika which always catches me a bit off guard - I still have to figure out why the Nazis used that one!). Ganesh is the son of Vishnu and he is the god of material wealth. Praying to him is done to remove obstacles to worldly success. So that makes sense to me as to why you see him everywhere - everyone's got rupee fever! But I still didn't know why he has an elephant head. Well, it seems that there are many stories about that and so you get different ideas from different people. My favorite, thus far, has been that Shiva comes home after years of being away (yes, this sounds very much like a Greek tragedy) and comes looking for his consort Parvati. He finds her in her bedroom with their son Ganesh who Shiva had not seen grow into a man. Shiva thinks that he is a suitor and, rather than ask who this guy is, he chops off Ganesh's head. Parvati tells him what he has done and, in remorse, he gives Ganesh a new elephant head so that this will never happen again.

There are several lessons that I think we can learn from this tragedy. First, knock before entering a room. Second, get to know your kids. Play ball. Take them to the movies. Don't let decades go by without going and getting a coke with them. Also, memorize your child's face. If you are worried that you might chop their head off a second time, perhaps you should have the elephant head so he can see you coming and run! Thirdly, if you have been away from your wife for that long, she will more than likely have made friends that you know nothing about. Ask her who the guy is before inflicting mortal harm on him. He might just be a handyman or a eunuch or something. You are the one who's been gone that long - give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I am being too pragmatic about it, but this is how I interpret the story. Oh geesh, I hope I don't get into trouble for this one!