RIFLE RANGE BOY

Everything was hunky dory when others ruled them. Kingdoms after kingdoms came and went. Everybody lived within their space and thought they had everything taken care of. Then, they even shared a sacred region, Katargama or Kathirgama. Each community claimed the local deity, Murugan, as their own. The Buddhists are told that Lord Buddha himself sanctioned Lord Murugan to protect Sri Lankans from the elements. The Tamils, with their ancestral affiliations, brought in their own diety and gave him his divine status. Even the local aboriginal people there, the Veddas, the island's earliest inhabitants, claim the sacred area as theirs. Their DNA studies revealed their commonality with the tribals in Malaysia, India, and Myanmar, which is more apparent than their Singhalese and Tamil Indian brothers. The Muslims did not want to be left out. They built a mosque nearby to avoid missing out on the blessings. So, they had a giant compound with a collection of temples of worship in a single a...

I have a confession. When I was young, at an impression age, when my guards were down, naive and the eyes of knowledge were still in slumber, I was ashamed whenever I attended religious functions. The theatrics showed by the professors of religions were, in my nimble mind, laughable. During Thaipusam and fire-walking ceremonies, the high decibels, high energies and activities that they emanated just took away any semblance of divinity from it. Now, I know better, I think, I hope. Like the Oracles of Delphi, messages are transmitted in coded languages and double speaks. They are all symbolic notes to the secret of life. We have to understand that the religious leaders were spreading the good word to mostly illiterate simpletons and agrarians with primal needs. The power, force, fire, sounds, noise, water and light are not as they are. The evil or dark forces are not from without but within; our naivety, ignorance and our inertia to progress. The sceptic in me, however, asks myself ...

Dedicated to PC who wanted to know my barber's philosophy... During our many hair-cutting sessions, I used to engage in deeply engaging banters about philosophy and religion, specifically religions of the Indian sub-continent. The barber shop is a simple establishment, in keeping with his simple philosophies of life, has seen much changes since the 80s when it was first set up. Starting life with a strict religious upbringing in his childhood and early adulthood, certain life changing events indeed changed his outlook on life, belief in God and attitude towards the self-professed upholders of the organised religion. In other words, there is the Maker (Nature, Cosmos, whatever) and there is him. That is all. A dash across two dates. The darkness before your existence and after, no previous lives and no after-life. Above us only sky and no cycles of re-birth and no book of Judgement too. During one of our colloquy, he brought up the notion of the origin of Lord Muruga, the deity...

Shiv family (North) Siva family (South) Coin, 200BCE, Indus Valley Somebody said that Hinduism is amalgamation of believes of many in the one God with various manifestations and names. The earlier settlers who jump started the civilization in the Indus Valley had their own Gods of worship. Along came the culture from the North, either by cultural or physical invasion. Their mode of worship was forcibly or by diffusion infused into the society. Some society members never forgot their predecessor icons and continued worshipping them in their own way and stories were created to substantiate their practice. With that background in my mind, I was not at all surprised when the secretary of the temple, on his routine weekly announcement of events of the following week, totally omitted Thaipusam in his list. He was faithfully reading out on this prayer and that prayer and Shivrathri. That's it! Actually, Murugan (Kaarthikeyan) has been hanging around the scriptures since the f...