HINDU Terminal...!

Why I am a Hindu...  An American girl was sitting on the right side, near window seat. It indeed was a long journey – it would take nearly seven hours! I was surprised to see the young girl reading a Bible – unusual of young Americans! (Later I came to know that September 11 has changed mind-set of lot of US citizens. They suddenly turned religious, it seemed.) After some time she smiled and we had few acquaintances talk. I told her that I am from India. Then suddenly the girl asked: “What’s your faith?” “What?” I didn’t understand the question. “I mean, what’s your religion? Are you a Christian? Or a Muslim?” “No!” I replied, “I am neither Christian nor Muslim”. Apparently she appeared shocked to listen to that. “Then who are you…?” “I am a Hindu”, I said. She looked at me as if she is seeing a caged animal. She could not understand what I was talking about. A common man in Europe or US know about Christianity and Islam, as they are the leading religions of the world...

“All men dream,” said T. E. Lawrence, “but not equally.” Artistic, introspective and questioning, even as a child it was clear to those around me that I was, in Lawrence’s terminology, a “dreamer of the day.” I disliked what I regarded as the shallow materialism and trivial ways people interacted in the West. But above everything else, I deplored groupthink. It was the unknown, new ideas, different notions about how to live that attracted me. Already , at sixteen, I had become a vegetarian. I loathed the idea of eating animals, though it also enabled me to avoid the worst if British cuisine. I was also interested in spirituality, though I knew little about it. I meditated (or tried to, at least) for the first time at the age of fifteen. At seventeen  I started making a more serious study of spirituality, mysticism, the esoteric and religion, with my reading mixing serious and scholarly books with more popular and no doubt somewhat superficial books on these subjects. I al...