Through my childhood, I’ve had the pleasure and discomfort of sitting through innumerable rituals at home, religiously uttering words that made no sense to me, partaking in every festivity until they became routine to me. The way my legs would cramp up after a few hours of sitting cross legged on the floor, the pangs of hunger we’d feel as we waited for the rituals to get over so we can eat, and what now I think of as the most curious ritual I’ve performed – placing carefully cooked and colored balls of rice on our terrace for our unfriendly neighborhood crows while praying that all the best things happen to the men in the family. We also had rituals where as a ten year old, I was expected to pray and hope for the best husband. Things rarely made sense then.
I’m sure you have some stories of your own. I’m not saying that this book explains why that particular notion started, why I would be woken up at 6 to feed the cawing crows that I was terrified of, but it definitely to me lent a different way of looking at religion. A way of putting things into perspective for the bad and the good. Everything my parents said, and my grandparents spoke about is there in that one chapter of Hinduism but it made so much more sense reading it now and being able to think about the chronology (the supposed one, in some cases).
The author’s writing style is straight-forward, seasoned with some lines of wry humor every now and then. His utter devotion to rationality in arguments is what won me over, and his presentation of multiple sides of the delicate topic for me came through wonderfully (but to begin with, I was and am atheist, perhaps that affected my capacity to tolerate his commentary). The one thing I’d wish for was that more was said about eastern religions, although what was said already held a high potency and helped me understand religion a little better.
Here are two beautiful quotes from the book I’ll leave you with:
Religion’s preoccupation with life after death so often made it an enemy of life before death.
Religion can be a drug that soothes the pain of existence. Only an ungenerous mind would fail to sympathise with those whose misery is eased in this way.
I hope you see the beauty in these words the way I did. If you do, you should reach out and grab a copy of A Little History of Religion as soon as you can. Happy reading!
– Swathi Chandrasekaran
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Perplexed Potatoes 