Thatha (Grandad)

Thatha is now 92. He has spent his whole life focused on one goal: moksha or spiritual liberation, and he pursued it by following the word of the Vedas.

He gets up in the morning and does surya namaskar to the sunrise. He has a small cup of filter coffee before lighting the lamp and starting his day’s prayers. He chants shlokas out loud for five hours till lunch. He is an energetic man filled with conviction, so you’d hear his voice reverberate through the rest of the house.

Rituals involve a lot of movement. My grandad stands, sits, makes his hands face the sky, places his hands over his head, walks around in a circle, pours water to the side, lights a lamp, and spreads smoke around. This makes the experience physical and embodied so it’s imprinted in him for longer.

He’d often tell me, there is no difference between me, you, that bird, and this blade of grass. All is one. We are all the same, so you don’t want to hurt anything, not even an insect.

He takes a short nap after lunch, then gets back to his prayers. He continues his prayers till dinner — his evening prayers are more mellow than his morning ones. He steps out for a short walk, drinks a glass of buttermilk, sleeps, and wakes up before sunrise the next day to start surya namaskar again. He has done this everyday for forty years. He doesn’t skip a day, even when he is sick.

If people come home, he says hello and quickly rushes back to his prayers. If you speak to him on the phone, he’ll say “how are you”, “all the best”, and “God bless you” all in the span of one minute before saying “talk to Pati (grandmom)”. He is in a rush to get back to his real work, the only thing that matters: his pursuit of moksha. Sometimes my grandmom gets upset that he isn’t spending as much time in conversation with her, the family, or guests who come home. On those occasions, he’ll hang around to placate her but his face tells you that his mind is with God, not with you.

As he got closer to 90, something started to change. He has become more caring for my grandmom as she is getting older and sick. He cuts vegetables for lunch and dinner, and washes all the dishes. He brings her food and spends more time chatting with her. He engages in worldly things a bit more, like the news or TV shows, so he has more to say in conversation. He asks questions about what I’m upto. The conversation still doesn’t last long, but it is longer than it was before.

When thatha traveled to Chennai, he didn’t feel as excited as he usually does because my grandmom couldn’t make it on the trip. He’s usually ecstatic to go to temples by himself but this time he cut the trip short. He wanted to go back to see Pati because he missed her.

For forty years, he believed that enlightenment came through strict adherence to the Vedas: chanting, rituals, ascetism, and discipline. But in his 90s, he has realized that love, presence, and service to others are not distractions from the divine, but the expression of it. God isn’t in the temples, God is in people.