The Hustle of ‘HOW TO…’
Ever since we are born, we are constantly trained to do things a certain way which obviously, follows a supervised course of action that guides us to perform the task in question a certain way. I remember how I was told to touch the feet of every idol in the temple, when I visited one while fully awake and on my own feet, but when my baffled self inquired my granny in my toddler voice — “Why is everyone touching the feet? He didn’t even say — “Grow up with glory to your name (Bahot Bade Ho Jaoo!)! Then why are they…” “SHHHHH….” — said my granny pressing her jaws together and grinding her teeth in frustration with an angry growl and a lot of emotions mixed together to make her vent off like that at a SEVEN years old. “What is wrong with you? Didn’t your mother teach you anything? ANYTHING at all?”, my granny exclaimed, clenching my bamboo-thin wrist ready to snap it in two, which I’ll admit made me teary-eyed. To answer my ‘Stupid Question’ my granny responded — “We touch the feet because that’s god. Now bend your backbone and bow down to him or he will put a curse on you.” Those words scared me for sure, but I mustered up some courage and asked yet another question with utter curiosity in my teary shaky voice, hoping to melt my granny with a pair of big eyes and a cute puppy face and find the answer to — “Then why isn’t he moving! Shouldn’t this other god be flying, he has the mountain now?”. My granny simply threw me in the hands of my mother as the other devotees in the queue had started to give my granny “THE LOOK” oh yeah, that was bad, being judged for not teaching your SEVEN years old grandkid the “WHY and HOW TO.. about your religion is a SHAME.” I can’t even begin to imagine the shame and embarrassment it must have caused my granny, so I guess it was fair that she took her ‘bundle of joy-turned-bunker of embarrassment’ and just dumped it where it belonged — to my mother…
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