My Immortal India
My mother started playing the Hanuman Chalisa for my developing ears while I was still in her womb. She wanted to ensure that I was spiritually protected and blessed with Hanumanji’s grace. Her mother had advised her to do so as she had been advised the same by her mother before her. As a fourteen-year-old born in the US, in 2018, the first sounds I hear in the morning are mantras written during the time of the Upanishads. These uncomplicated everyday happenings show how the interactions and connections between family immortalize the nation and traditions of India. Three qualities exist as stimuli to the immortalization of India: truthfulness, beauty, and utility. India’s people, culture, and spirituality are saturated with these qualities.
Last year, I volunteered in a program called A Thousand Lights For Peace. The notion of what it represented drew crowds from all walks of life, every race, gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and nationality. This event was organized by the Houston Mahatma Gandhi Library with the intent to celebrate the accomplishments of Mohandas K. Gandhi. As I walked through the crowd, handing out the tall, white candles which were to be lit, I felt joy. I felt joy at being able to protect the memory of one of India’s greatest heroes. I felt joy to tell the tales of his actions which shaped the idealisms and lives of Indians today. As I looked out into the evening and saw candlelights lit by 1,000 people who were celebrating our culture, I felt as if that moment had no time or place. I felt a sense of déĵà vū as if we had been united by the same thought, years ago. People feel happiness when sharing our culture and its timelessness.
In 2016, I visited India and its relatively unchanged culture of contradictions. In situations I could not imagine, I was astonished by how resilient the people could be. Without clean water, a child would walk kilometers to receive a minimal education. Contrastly, somewhere else a person would sip chai on a balcony as a servant swept at their feet. The people of India continuously learn and adapt to their surroundings whilst keeping the traditions which have remained alive for millennia.
Thinking back to my experiences in the US and in India, two very different places, our cultures seemed similar somehow. Incredibly, my own family and fellow Indians automatically formed an Indian subculture in the United States. We had to grow and adapt to a different place, all whilst keeping our own Indian lifestyle within us. The Indian culture is strong, unique, and priceless. When our way of life is automatically integrated into our everyday lives, we can no longer tell the difference between our traditions and the intellectual achievements in other places.
India’s love for the concepts of colour and the art of passing on our culture through stories is so beautifully embedded into the fabric of what our country exists to be. The culture and idealism of Indian traditions dating back to the beginning of time are not perfect. The people of India have, through the ages, kept the most useful characteristics and discarded the degrading ones, replacing them with newer philosophies. Over millennia, the traditions continue to improve and adapt, without leaving old values behind. The topics discussed and the unspoken laws of today’s day and age can all be found in the Vedic texts. Cures to disease and concepts such as yoga or meditation are evident in the immortalized ideals formed thousands of years ago. Other cultures are able to see the outstanding attributes of the Indian way of life and incorporate it into theirs. One example of this is the practice of yoga. This ancient practice came from India as early as the eleventh century. Ten centuries later, it is still alive because of the people who remember and continue to preserve the idealism present over 1000 years ago. This is how the Indian way of life has remained immortal over the centuries. The people who live and help evolve the Indian way of life and culture have continued on and will continue on for many more centuries.
The Fine Arts Museum of Houston has a section that houses art, saris, pots, and various other objects that are still prominent in India today. Their beauty and utility have withstood the test of time. Today you are able to go to almost any Indian home and somewhere, find a sari, or an old Indian-style pot or dish. The notion of how these objects and culture have been able to last until this day further emphasizes one idea: India is immortal.
The moment I heard the question “What makes India immortal?” these beautiful actualities and experiences came flooding into my mind. It did not matter from which point of view I thought, whether it be the music, arts, science, mathematics, spirituality, or culture, the immortality of India was consistently and poetically evident. The mathematical idea of zero was discovered and defined by Indian mathematician Āryabhaṭīya. India is also the land that gave the world the concept of infinity. Seeing India as immortal is effortless.