growing up hindu: a personal perspective

For me, Hinduism is strongly associated with the Indian subcontinent. So growing up as a Hindu is strongly linked with growing up in India and sometimes it is difficult for me to distinguish between the two. Yet it is also true that India houses many religions including Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Bahai faith etc. Quite a few of these faiths are regarded as subsets of Hinduism and that is because of the accepting and inclusive nature of Hinduism. It pretty much assimilates any new influences into itself and it is so broad in scope that it can do that fairly easily. As I appreciate the richness, intricacy and complexity of Hinduism I also appreciate more and more my exposure to it as I was growing up.



My father had a little shrine with idols and pictures of his favorite deities and gods. He spent and still spends around an hour each morning after his bath saying mantras in prayer and then doing his Surya-Namaskaras and Yogasanas. The man in the pciture below is not my father but the image does provide a feel of the prayer altar.



My mother would spend about five to ten minutes after bathing in front of the gods, murmuring her prayers. Her devotion was to her family. She always wore a sari and cooked all our meals and all our meals were cooked meals. If you are familiar with Deepak Chopra and his description of a balanced meal that is what we ate every day. My mother also wore the Mangalasutra a necklace with black beads and gold cups as a sign that she was a married woman. All her life she worked as a home maker. Again the woman below is not my mother, but the image recreates a feel of her and our kitchen.




My father worked as a civil engineer with the govt. and every three years we moved to a different city/town in India. We did not go to the temple on a regular basis. But Krishna was my pal and I reveled in the stories of his stealing butter and yoghurt because then I could steal Bournvita from the kitchen shelf with impunity. Temple visits were more about appreciating the architecture and the workmanship than about devotion.



I connected more with the religion through the stories I heard on my father’s lap and off it after a certain age. The Stories were about all the various gods and their doings, tales of valor about the Hindu kings of yore, moral tales from the Panchatantra that most often had animals as characters and of course little vignettes from the epics. There are two epics the Ramayana traces the life of Rama.

I can tell you a little story form there. I was very surprised after coming to the U.S. when I saw the squirrels here. They are larger than the ones in India and they do not have any marking on their back. The Indian squirrels have a tri-mark of light-dark-light on their backs. The story goes that King Rama was busy trying to build the bridge to Lanka to attack the king Ravana there who had captured his wife Sita and was holding her captive there. All of the God’s creatures were doing their best to help Rama. The little squirrel saw all the activity and picked up a stone on her back and did her bit to help. When Rama saw the squirrel struggling with a stone twice her size on her back, he was very touched and he picked up the squirrel and caressed her back. The lines of his fingers made a permanent mark on the squirrels back and all her kind as a token of Rama’s appreciation. And since Rama never came to the US the squirrels here do not have those marks!




Mahabharata is set in the time of Krishna the next avatar of Vishnu. Vishnu is part of the holy trinity Bramhaa-Vishnu-Shiva. Creator-maintainor-destoyer. Bramhaa is the creator and Vishnu is the maintainer. So as the administrator whenever things get out of balance Vishnu manifests himself on earth to set things right. The various avatars he has taken are that of fish, tortoise, boar, lion, dwarf, etc and according to some Buddha was his last avatar. The avatars seem to follow the story of evolution. Rama was a goody goody king, Krishna incorporates the dark side as well and Buddha is of course compassion personified.



Despite the diversity of gods there is one universal reality Bramhan, which can be realized by the individual soul Atman since they are essentially one. This is the vedic truth. The multiplicity of gods exist also to aid in bhakti and the realization of smaller goals. Since there are four aims dharma - duty, artha - money and worldly success, kama - worldly desires and moksha - liberation. Although I was exposed to these concepts off and on I only made coherent sense of them after taking a course in Indian philosophy at college.

But to come back to the stories I heard as a child.
Another story that I enjoyed although it exemplifies respect for one’s parents goes like this. Shiva and parvati have two sons. Kartik and ganesh. Kartik was a little jealous of ganesh since he thought the younger one was a favourite of his parents. In an effort at one-upmanship Kartik challenged his sibling to a race. Let us go around the world three times and see who comes first said kartik. Ganapati agreed. Kartik has the peacock as his vehicle and ganapati has a mouse. Kartik thought it was a sure bet that he would out-speed ganesh as he flew around the world three times. He returned to find ganapati sitting at his parents feet waiting patiently for kartik. How could you get here so fast spluttered kartik. Shiva-parvati laughed and explained to kartik that ganapati had circum-ambulated around them thrice and as ganesh explained my parents are my world and shiva-shakti being the primordial forces of the world kartik could not argue against the logic and had to concede defeat.



I connected with my religion also through the various festivals that we had. Diwali, is the festival of lights, and we light lamps or diyas and place them all around the house. We decorate the home entrance. We always got new clothes. We made and ate specific sweets and delicacies. We got fire-crackers and burst them every evening (not unlike the fourth of July celebrations here). Each of the days is marked by a different kind of puja. One is to Lakshmi the goddess of wealth, another to Saraswati, goddess of learning, another for appreciating and giving thanks to the tools of your trade and another day for honoring your spouse. But basically Diwali celebrates Rama’s return to his kingdom after many years of exile.



Dussera celebrates his victory over Ravana and more generally the triumph of good over evil. Ravana is the ten headed evil king of Lanka. At the community level huge effigies of Ravana and his brothers are put up and set on fire.



often a skit is put up and scenes from the epic are enacted over ten days, not unlike the passion plays of Jesus’s life. However traditionally all characters were played by men, even the role of Rama’s wife Sita, since girls/women from respectable families could not perform in public. But definitely things are a-changing.



Then there is Holi, the festival of color when every one splashes color and/or throws water on every one else. This is the great equalizer festival, when gender, age, caste, class norms get a break. The origin is to celebrate the killing of the demoness Holi by Krishna but more generally the Rasa leela of Krishna and his gopis.



Rakhee is a festival where a sister ties a little thread on her brother’s wrist to remind him to protect her. Ganapati puja and Durga puja are big in different parts of the country.





So the values and moral codes or dharma that are a large part of Hinduism were transmitted in very many ways. The belief in karma and reincarnation too I learned through osmosis by being in that culture. My attitude to reincarnation has certainly come full circle. I have heard enough accounts of children recalling their past life that I am a firm believer now. Past life regression may or may not yield accurate recall, but when the past life information comes up as a knowing one can feel the difference and be sure. I think if you believe in the soul or Atma you almost certainly have to believe in reincarnation and life as a school. Samsara is the cycle of birth-death-rebirth because of action and re-action and the way out is to stay non-reactive but responsive. As long as you are caught in the action reaction cycle you are trapped in the veil of Maya.



As therapists we need to stay non-reactive yet responsive. We respond to the client’s cry for help when necessary and stay non-reactive when they are acting out. We need to be accepting towards our clients and we need to hold them in our space which often might mean expanding our boundaries. This is what Hinduism is about. We allow them to change us as we allow them to be changed by us. Thus, it is a process of assimilation. We can see each little break-through taking place in the client as a death of an earlier habit and a new life beginning with the new learning. As long as the client is caught in the chain of action and reaction, change does not occur. It is when old habits are destroyed that therapy yields results. We might have to come in different avatars to counter different problems that the client has. Yalom says a different therapy for each client I say a different avatar of the therapist for each of the client’s problems.