Deck the Cars with Strings of Jasmine

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Comparative Conversation with a Colleague

Yesterday, a colleague who typically works from home appeared as a pleasant surprise, wearing a rich, dark-and-light, pink-patterned, thick silk sari, looking elegant as always. She was coming in to the office to settle some expenses.

"I thought about you during my commute today. I saw the same Aum symbol that you painted [in vermilion] over your doorway on several cars and buses." (In celebration of the final, pivotal days of Navrati, Channa, my driver, also strung yellow mums on the hood and across the grill of the car, and hung jasmine from the rear-view mirror.) "Remind me: What does Aum stand for?"

"It's really the idea of one god as compared with idol worship."

"And that's the worship you do, of the one god?"

"I do both. My mother worships idols, though her father was a member of Arya Samaj."

"Arya Samaj?"

"Yes, they were scholars of the Vedas and felt there should be no distinction among castes, and no idol worship.

"How is that possible, if your grandfather was against idol worship, that your mother was able to do it?"

"Because her mother did."

"So they're not far enough apart religiously that it caused problems in their marriage, I guess, since both of them were still Hindu --"

"Right."

"Sikhs are also monotheistic, aren't they?"

"Well, they don't believe in a human sort of god, but they do have nine gurus, including Gobind Singh. Sikhs used to be part of many families. Originally, a Sikh was just the first-born son of any Hindu family, whose function was to protect the family."

"First-born sons are special in Judaism, too." (If you click on the link in the previous sentence, among other details of the tradition, you'll learn, "According to the traditional rabbinic interpretation...the duties of a priest fell upon the eldest son of each family. The first-born was to be dedicated to God in order to perform this task.")

"And they really became separate only in the last century. Things became bad when the army entered the Golden Temple in 1984, to arrest a terrorist."

"Oh, that's awful that they defiled the temple --" I said, recalling the reason I'm forbidden, as a non-Hindu, to enter some temples. (Months ago, I told a colleague that I thought it was exclusive to be barred from entering some temples and he said that the exclusion resulted from the British, having desecrated a number of Hindu temples pre-independence.)

"Just as there is Pakistan, the Sikhs wanted their own state, Khalistan...."

"I'm most comfortable, talking about others' religions when I can find parallels or parts of them that remind me of mine. Then they don't seem so foreign...like the nine-day Navrati festival together with Diwali remind me of Chanukah, which is our eight-day festival of lights."

My colleague's eyes became wide and she said, "Wow!" smiling at the similarity.

"Yeah, I was a Comparative Literature major and I guess I always enjoy being comparative."

"I studied Child Psychology and was able to do some comparative work, too. A number of us lived with and studied the tribe in the east that speaks Ho --"

"Ho?"

"Yes, it's a really rural tribe, and also the Nairs of Kerala (in South India) and the Khasi of Central India, in Madhya Pradesh. They're all matrilineal.

"Neat."

"And we did some other work, comparing other parts of Asia with India."

"Like where?"

"Like China and Japan....I didn't like the clinical part of Psychology, though, as it made me so sad to meet with, for example, autistic children and --"

"My partner Pat got a Masters in Psych., but opted out; the clinical part upset her, too."

I could have kept talking with my colleague all afternoon, but I knew I needed to let her get her work done, so that she could get back to her holiday celebration, and I was also trying to leave early to work from home for the rest of the day, so that I could enable Channa to continue his holiday celebration with minimal interruption.

At 2 o'clock, when I sat down in the backseat, Channa reached over to the other front seat and handed me a package. "Sweets for the holiday, Ma'am."

"Oh, Channa, I should have known to do the same for you. Thank you! It's so kind of you!" It was a small, foil, heavy tray of something. The bag referred to "pure ghee." My doctor forbids me to eat sugar to help keep my blood sugar in check for my otosclerosis, but I knew to accept the candy in any case.

When I got it home, Pat and I opened it, to see if it might be of interest to her, and also because I was curious what candy made of pure, clarified butter (ghee) would look like. It looked like a tray of solidified butter and hardly smelled sweet.

It was a perfect example of how there's not necessarily a 1:1 translation or parallel between what I value and what people of other cultures value, but how there are still universal values we share, e.g., gift-giving/receiving.

One more comparison comes to mind: Last night, I was wired and couldn't fall asleep till 1:30 am. I started a book by R.K. Narayan, which my friend Chitra recommended to me, Malgudi Days. Could the author be the Indian Sholom Aleichem or I.B. Singer? I'll have to keep reading to see.