Free…. is it ?

Aditya was relaxing under the tree after his interview. He was going over the questions asked in the interview in his mind. He wondered how clichéd the questions were and how unimaginative his answers were. But question which was the favourite of all the interviewers made him reflect. Not that this was the first time he was asked this question or that he was taken aback by the question but probably it was just his reflective mood that took him back in time…
“What are the three things that you believe in?”
Aditya didn’t even have to think twice, hadn’t he rehearsed this one several hundred times. “Honesty, integrity and hard work”, he answered.
Given the shade of the tree, the fact that he had nothing to do, he began to wonder if anyone else in the world gave a different answer to that question and smiled to himself.
Three year old Aditya spent all his time with his grandmother, given that both his parents were working and they lived in apartments and didn’t even know who lived next door, his grandmother was his only friend. She told him stories of Ramayana, Mahabharata and probably all Hindu scriptures. With such an environment it was not of any surprise that Aditya corrected the priest in the temple, when he sang one of the slokas wrong. Not that the meaning mattered to him, but they were like his lullabies and he knew them by heart.
It was when Aditya was 12 yrs, after the class on Isa Masih from Hindi text book, he began to wonder, not that he hadn’t known about Christ or any other religion but just that it was that day he started thinking. He went back home and asked his grand mom “If god exists then shouldn’t he be the same for everyone, why is it different?” oh! what classic Hindi filmi question it was, he wondered now.
She had given him another classic answer “All religions preach the same- wellbeing of all creatures, God is one but just the forms are different”. But this chapter didn’t end here, it had only begun. The answer was too simple for Aditya to leave it there.
Aditya hardly remembered anytime when his parents didn’t fight. He couldn’t help but wonder why they fought so much, when they both earned enough didn’t interfere with each other. As he grew older he turned a deaf ear to all these problems.
On the day of Kali Puja, he read in the news paper about the animal sacrifice which happened throughout the country, then came the Bakrid and several other festivals. It was getting a little too much for him to digest. He went back to his grand mom “If it is good that all religions preach then why this killing”. “All these are rituals through which people try to connect to god and we being brahmins do not do all this, it’s the other castes that do these kind of rituals”. This was the first time when Aditya registered something called caste.
Animal lover that Aditya was he wondered how savage god must be if he demands so much blood. A little research on different religions made him think Buddhism was the best religion, because it promotes peace and probably didn’t have any castes, this notion stayed on for a while. And he essentially stopped thinking about all religions.
Kitttu’s affair with books continued and he read random books picked up from library. The more he read the more his aversion towards religion grew. The breaking point came when he heard his father talk over the phone “ How can Archana marry a low caste Christian, If I she would have been my daughter I would have killed her” , Archana was Aditya’s neighbor who had married against the wish of her family. This was the time when the two entities called Religion and Family started to mean nothing to him. Aditya gave up the two anchors which were attached to him till now.
A 14 yr old Aditya was reading loads of books, he read autobiographies of some great people, he read some famous novels. This was also the time when he read My experiments with truth, being the idealist he was Aditya tried to implement all that he read. It didn’t take too much time for him to realize life is not as idealist as books are and truth is good in small selective dosages, it is neither appreciated nor acknowledged in excess quantities. He left the third anchor called principles. He was left with one belief that all principles are subjective.
Aditya was in his engineering and he went to an international film festival which was happening for the first time in his city. Aditya saw a foreign film and the director spoke about the film and critiquing the idea of a nation. This seemed a completely different point of view to Aditya, who belonged to a generation where hating Pakistan, contributing a 100 bucks to Kargil victims and celebrating Independence day with Ma tujhe salaam was the essence of patriotism. Aditya again did what he was accustomed to do; he read the book written by the director and many more. It was time to leave another reference point for Aditya, he couldn’t live with the idea of a nation anymore.
Like all guys of his age did, Aditya turned to friends. It was the time, when he began thinking being with friends was probably the best way to spend time. But like everything else in his life, this too didn’t last for long…. All it took was to question the ideas of the group/herd and in no time he was out… Thus broke another string that was holding him.
If I have negated everything, what is that one thing that matters to me, probably nothing, probably I’m aimless or probably free….
Aditya………… Aditya……………. Someone called ……
Probably he heard, probably he didn’t, he just got up and walked………

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