INDIA IS CONSIDERED the bastion of spirituality. Every mountaintop is supposedly sprinkled with wise men in orange robes contorting themselves into complex yogic positions or communing with trees. So just because I share the same ethnic heritage as those men doesn’t mean I have some inborn sense of the metaphysical.
At the age of ten I’d taken a stand to stop attending the Cerritos Hindu Temple with my family. There were far more important things than learning the origins and teachings of one of the world’s oldest religions, namely, Sunday morning cartoons.
Not that it really mattered; I was pretty much failing Hinduism 101. It was the pundit’s fault. He should’ve taken my suggestion to put epics like the Mahabharat and Ramayan in comic book form. As a result I could barely tell the difference between Vishnu and Shiva.
Of course I’d heard of Kali, along with gods like Ganesh and Hanuman. However, with regard to the second two, I couldn’t remember which one was a monkey and which had the head of an elephant.
I went back through the house and into what, according to the real estate agent, was supposed to be the library. My parents had converted it into a Puja room, where they laid garlands, burned incense, and offered coconuts to the Hindu gods on a white marble altar. I didn’t have any coconuts on me, but I did put half of a Twix on the offering plate.
There were several deities my family worshipped, and as I gazed at the statuettes, some of it began to come back. The flute-playing man in blue was Krishna, probably the most famous incarnation of the god Vishnu. He’d definitely set the bar high for future divine embodiments like me. Krishna’s teachings were summed up in the Bhagavad Gita, sort of the Hindu Bible.
Next to Krishna was Lakshmi, seated in a yogic position on top of a lotus blossom, her lovely face a perfect picture of serenity. Lakshmi was the Goddess of Wealth so I said a quick prayer over my Lotto numbers.
I was surprised to see two non-Hindu icons. A bronze Buddha in the laughing pose and a small, framed painting of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. Apparently my parents were more open-minded than I thought.
Now if they’d only get off my back about marriage.
The last statue was of a chubby god with an elephant head. Staring at his appealing face I remembered he was Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. I said a quick prayer to him over my Lotto numbers, too.
Lakshmi was the only female featured on the altar, so my parents obviously didn’t worship Kali. This was a dead end. There was another place I could try, though, and they happened to serve Starbucks coffee.