It was the witching hour… and pitch dark. My mother was snoring peacefully beside me and I was twitching a little trying to get to that perfect state of comfort while still half asleep. I think I woke my mother with my wiggling. And right out of the blue, a burst of violent sound from my front door! The door to my little home has a netted screen in front of it with a couple holes around the corners just begging for insects to make their way through. And it sounded like someone was repeatedly throwing themselves at the screen and trying to get in! It frightened the wits right out of my head (there might be those who say that I don’t have many wits in the first place but I respectfully beg to differ – I distinctly felt my rather considerable wit start sliding out of my ears, right along with my brain cells…). I was still half-asleep mind you, and in that state, I believe that the rational, calm half of myself was still trying to crawl toward consciousness at a frustratingly mellow rate. In those witless moments, the fear enveloped me – fear of the unknown. It was forcibly brought to bear upon me that no matter how much science tries to explain the world around us and distill the magic and the unknown into bland, rational semblances, it can still be said: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
At that moment of ululating fear, the one thing that my mind latched onto was the lamp. I have a lot of memories of hearth and home of when I was a child. And a great number of them center around my parents lighting the lamp. To be sure, daddy forgive me!, my dad does not have the best pitch (musically speaking) in the world. However, when he speaks the shlokas that are my staple mental diet every morning while at home, their aural and emotional resonance sweeps me back into the cocoon of my childhood, back into the space where the belief that all is well with the world holds complete sway. Ever since I had started living by myself, the practice of lighting the lamp in the morning and evening sort of withered away into a childhood action, and not something of import anymore. In a lot of ways, I felt that the rational symbolism and psychological benefits of lighting the lamp and saying the shlokas could be had without the crutch of the actual rituals, and that using such a crutch was an insult to my rational thought processes. I was also being lazy, to be sure… My parents were brought up in that manner for so long, that in my mind, it was not wrong for them to continue that way. However, I, being a product of the 21st century with a deep belief in science and globalism, believed that I should not give undue significance to the ritualistic half, but pay more attention to the meanings and designs behind the rituals that our ancestors started in order to provide our society with a solid foundation and neurological skeleton. The idea that the human mind had its animal instincts and deep rooted fears was not something to be tolerated.
In a lot of ways, we, of this world, are entirely spoiled. We live in such a sheltered, rule-bound society, where the external impinging from a foreign entity is almost completely prohibited. Our minds might be open while we are children, while the rational does not entirely overtake the part of the brain that is open to new wonders, however fearsome or unnatural they may be. But growing up with the TV, and the universities, and the books, and feeding our minds, while all well and good, makes us forget that there are other things out there which cannot be put into words. There might be forces outside our purview, which we might not have thought imaginable! And when such things knock on the doors of our minds and hearts, we are completely unprepared to face them. The fear that overtakes us, prohibits rationality. To get through the fear, pure belief that is coached into us from birth is the only solution that I see. Once past the fear, rational thought will certainly help us. But if we are unable to function due to fear, rational thought will never be within our reach.
And for me, the moment of extreme fear (which when I think about it now, was completely disproportionate to the situation), was resisted by the image of the lamp that my mother faithfully lit in my small home here everyday. It was that lamp that lit the darkness of my mind and showed me a threshold past which paranoia and the unknown would not quell my belief in myself and my protections. My protections form a curtain (transparent but present) around me in my everyday interactions, that I had never before thought to see! My protectors, Ganesha, Krishna, Vishnu, Gaea, and a whole host of others, support me everyday and give me the strength to dismiss them and believe in a rational world. Whether such entities exist separately, where I do not exist and where other believers do not exist, does not matter. They exist for me, and provide the cocoon for me without which I probably would be mentally disabled to the point of paranoia. And I am ashamed and disturbed by my arrogant assumptions that I am capable of existence without any support whatsoever. I am extremely grateful to my parents and my ancestors for fashioning this support system and providing me with this mental sustenance with no expectation of thanks or respect. And I hope that every child in this universe and in all the universes which exist will be given a similar cocoon against the night fears and the creepy crawlies of the mental/emotional layers surrounding us.
