An excerpt from The Heart Asks Pleasure First

When Daya was born, her parents took the decision not to impose any single religion on their daughter and their home. It was not though a godless space but one with many gods, with every god. They celebrated both Diwali and Christmas, they had above their front door a carved wooden Jesus, and to the side of the entrance sat a Ganesha from Mamallapuram. The chubby Ganesha sat upon an elegant stone lotus – the flower a feat of the sculptor – which, because of its upward-curving petals, also served as a bowl in which Daya's mother Asha, floated real lotuses torn from a nearby water body in which only buffaloes and their keepers – stray village boys – swam, both sets of bodies glistening in the noon sun. Initially, Asha had not wanted to buy the statue because Ganesha's mount, his mouse Mushak, hadn't been carved into the masterpiece. 'I just wish he was there – it would be complete, you know?' she had said to Gyanbut he had convinced her of its superior sculpting, pointing out cleverly the naughty smile on the elephant god's face.

When they brought it home and set it beside their front door, Asha had said a small prayer, through which she had asked for Daya. After the prayer, she had garlanded the statue with the jasmine she usually ribboned her hair with and placed sweetmeats by the god's feet. The next day they were gone. For six days she continued to leave sweets at his feet. Each day they disappeared, leaving her bewildered. On the seventh day, she opened the door to rush down to Vaikuntha where she could hear her husband calling her name for something, and that's when she saw it – a tiny brown mouse, no larger than her palm, sitting in the statue's lap, nibbling at the mithai he held firm in his tiny pronged paws. It was the first of many wishes the Elephant God would fulfil.

They had hanging on one wall of their living room a huge stretch of textile the colour of earth on which, painted in exquisite calligraphy, were two lines by Faiz.

                                           Kahan hai manzil-e-rah-e-tammana hum bhi dekhenge,

Ye shab hum-par bhi guzregi ye farda hum bhi dekhenge:Thahr, ai dil, jamal-e-ruh-e-zeba, hum bhi dekhenge.

There was no accompanying translation, but Asha would translate slowly if anyone asked.


'Where is the promised heaven at the end of this road of longing?
I too wish to see it.
This long night will pass me by too,
This promised tomorrow, I too will see it.
Wait, my heart, we too shall witness the soul's true beauty someday ...'

Faiz had died soon after Daya was born, and knowing her mother's deep love for his poems, friends had sent her the artwork. Ever since Asha had begun to learn Urdu, so that she could read his poems in the original language, that language India had mostly lost at Partition when it was hidden in people's mouths and carried on trains across a border so young it didn't quite yet know where it stood. Daya could still recall her parents drinking with friends and Gyan raising a glass to the Faiz poem, speaking louder than usual, intoxicated, saying, 'But our souls ... must always beSufi !' His friends would all knock-back their drinks, eyes squeezed shut in response to the strength of the imported liqueur one of them had bought in black, and Asha would say, 'He's not Sufi, jaan!' Gyan would kiss her and say, 'His soul was!' And she would laugh and shout 'Remember! God is not religion! THIS is religion!' and put on some Rolling Stones or Kishore Kumar and they would all clap and begin to dance.

Irreverent Asha who one sunny day in a car had said to Gyanthoughtfully, 'Who invented the first luggage belt, you know, for airports?'He looked confused. 'And who invented the first hand-dryer? Or toaster? See, you don't know. But you would agree that they were all lazy  people, right?' He laughed, 'Or maybe they were geniuses. At the very least they were efficient buggers.' Asha pushed her rose-tinted sunglasses up her nose, 'See, that's what I'm saying. Who invented  religion? It must have been a lazy person. Or as you put it ... an efficient genius.'

For a long time, Daya hadn't understood what religion was. She knew who God was but she had so many images for him. For her. She understood the pantheon, and that Jesus belonged to  Christianity and Allah to Islam, but she hadn't quite grasped the differences. In her house, they had never spoken of those differences, believing fiercely that you don't make the distinction. We are all the same. But wasn't it true that everyone was different? It was an argument her parents would have at times. You can teach children the purest fact of life, that everyone is the same. Humans eventually. Or, do you teach them that despite being different you must treat everyone the same because we are eventually the same?

Bones, muscle, souls, blood, shame, hate, joy. In the first case, was a child not going to grow up and eventually be surprised by the differences she had never been shown? It was a fi ne line, and Daya had never understood it. Never understood she was one of the children who had been taught the simplicity of sameness, without the complications of difference. And because she had never identified with any one religion, Daya had no sense of the other, but what was a charming innocence about the world at age twelve, was edging towards ignorance at twenty.

-------------