It might be the white tiles or the secluded location or maybe it is just His presence... I don't know what it is about a temple that brings the peace and tranquility it is surrounded by but it is breath taking and very soothing.
Few years ago, I stopped praying and believing in Him. It was a trend. It was so much cooler to be an athesist. To fight with the believers that He doesn't exsist and that everything could be answered by Science. Honestly, I had no opinion. I just enjoyed the false superiority it gave me. It was not that I didn't believe in His exsistance, I was simply indifferent to it. I went on with my life, calling Him when I required Him, asking for help, for forgiveness... and making sure I thanked Him every time something good happened in my life.
But I had forgotten the sweet prayer my mother taught me to say every night before bedtime. I had forgotten to give Him the gratitude He deserved for giving me such a lovely and fortunate life. I remember now how ma had, I suppose, modified it and added a "Thank You God For Everything" in English to the original Oriya orison. I remember giggling one night when ma taught my little sister the prayer and she couldn't pronounce the words right!
It has been a couple of months now that I've been visiting temples and churches. It began as a favor to a friend. He told me he needed to go there and he went there for it was peaceful... to cool his mind... sometimes because He called him... Though I had never consciously believed in God, I understood what he said. I always believed in super natural forces, inner peace and the 'call' although I had never experienced them.
The first temple I felt serene at was a Kali Mandir a little away from the main road, surrounded by lovely lush trees, cool and quiet despite the noisy cars rushing past and the mighty sky scarpers built few hundred meters away from it. I followed his movements for it had been long since I had visited a temple and had buried all the rituals that I might have learnt in oblivion.
We did not sit outside after all the rituals and prayers were done, that particular day. I remembered a memory where my family and I had visited a temple and papa had asked us to sit down on the floor for sometime, while he distributed the prasad amongst us. It was peaceful but my sister and I being very animated, never sat for long... We ran around... played...jumped...rang the big bell. I realize now what one gains and senses after sitting quietly inside the temple grounds. Almost like the peace one gets after one has a lovely good night's sleep.
I had stopped going to temples for another reason. My memories are a little jumbled but I recall two sad incidents, one where my shoes were stolen at The Great Shiridi Sai Baba's Temple and another where papa's phone was pick pocketed at a small temple in the outskirts of Hyderabad, where in if you walk a hundred times or so around it your wish, request or desire made to the deity would come true. I disliked temples and after these incidents, I disliked them even more. I don't know why He did such things to us. I suppose somewhere we did learn something out of it. Karma is another thing I strongly believe in. Strange it is, I realize, that on one hand I refused to believe in Him but on the other I believed in what He preached.
So, as I was saying, it has been a couple of months now that I've been visiting temples and as unfamiliar as it may seem, He has called me a few times. I felt shy and awkward asking to be taken to a temple but, even though I don't have a preference as to which deity I wish to visit, once I reach there, in His vicinity, lighting the little lamp to help Him fight away the darkness and ignorance, ringing the bell to inform him of my arrival or to awaken him to listen to my prayer and eating the little leaf or sweet as if accepting his blessing in the form of the generous gift, I feel mellow, serene, tranquil, calm, tame and any other peaceful adjective you wish to add!
I visited a temple today, as one would do before a big examination to ask for strength, courage, blessings and luck and in return I got my peace and focus I needed.
'Thank You God For Everything'
:)
