Where do the quest for Truth, love for God and spirituality lie?

I saw the cinematic adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Namesake' the other day- a very powerful film which evokes many different emotions. In many ways, this is a Bollywood film- dealing in emotions- but in many other ways its truly a crossover film too, dealing with the lifes of what may be us in the future. This is actually why this story strikes such a chord with desis abroad- it deals with all the challenges we have to go through in our life in the West.

This is a difficult time for youth of my generation. We grew up in independent India an India still displaced from herself, with Nehruvian policies only continuing the colonial narratives often. Schooled almost entirely in a western paradigm but brought up with Eastern values, we grew up to question our heritage, but most of us returned to our roots through our spiritual quest. But the roots which we returned to, were not always the rigid tradition of the society around us, not always to the values we were supposed to uphold: rather it was the revolutionary spirit of the Upanishadic age. Equality of all men, the meaninglessness of ritual unguided by the spiritual quest, a desire to see the social and the individual duties and lives flowing seamlessly into each other: these are not often the values tradition bequeathed to us.

Tradition- tradition that evolved out of stifling conditions of conquest, slavery and colonialism, we understand as transient compared to that vaster more truer Indic tradition of freedom. But faced with implementing the profound conclusions of those inspirarional seers of another era amidst the overwhelming challenges of today's life, most of us stuttered. Amidst a world convinced of the glitter and glamour of a material existence, endlessly churning out thoughts, words and ideas compellingly pedddling this view, where do the quest for Truth, love for God and spirituality lie? Even if renunciation be mental and not physical, in this world where acquistion is the buzzword, where do such ideals stand? Unable to stand up to the rigour demanded by this spiritual vision, many would rather take comfort in the established scaffolding of tradition, rather than take on this all-blinding material glitter.

All this came to me. All this churning happened on seeing this movie. and also the other side of this story- the divisive politics of a bitterly divided society- which drove thousands out of their homelands. What could have been an organic growth, expansion, has been muddled to take the form of this many-pronged struggle I described. As a Tamil Brahmin, sometimes I have to deal with such contradictions. I am proud of the achievemnts of the great Cholas- and the devotional genius of the Azhvars and Nayanmars- but I am also bitter at the cruel marginzalization of eveyrthing of the Brahmin worldview by the 'Dravidian' movement of the last many decades. I oppose Hindi chauvinism but I also cannot accept Tamil chauvinism.

I like, love, venerate this Dravida land- the Tamil land, but should I have to degrade my Sanskritic heritage for that? If not for their bitter persecution, maybe my father's generation would not have had to flee to other lands. Maybe I wouldnt have had to go thhrough so much agony of identity. But maybe also, had not my grandfather's generation not be secudced by 'English', I would still have lived to sing a loving hymn in an agraharam somewhere on the Cauvery. Whom should I fault for all this struggle? All this is the background to every Iyer's namesake. posted by Pathik @ 1:41 PM 0 Comments Sunday, April 08, 2007 Malik Hyderabadi