Gooseberries are great but is there a God?

November seems to be the time for gooseberries. Mounds and mounds of them, in markets. Sorted out in different sizes.

The lemons are seen in plenty too. I noticed this when I visited the market a couple of weeks ago. A group of ladies clad in traditional saris were bargaining for what seemed to be a mountain of lemons. When the veggie vendor finally gave in to a mutually agreeable selling price, the ladies picked the best out of the ' lemon mountain' and made their way to a nearby temple.

I followed them into the temple.

One of them had brought a couple of knives and soon they sat down and set to cutting out the lemons into halves and scooping out the pulp. All the while they were smiling and chatting with one another. They seemed to have planned the project very well, for another lady brought out a bottle of oil, a matchbox and a big box of cotton wicks.


Soon they filled the lemon 'containers' with some oil and positioned the wicks so that one end of the wick faced the rim while the other was dipped in oil. They lit each wick and then placed each 'lamp' on the ledge that separated the inner Sanctum Sanctorum from the room where devotees were allowed to stand.

It was a beautiful site. The lamps reflected soft light on the deity, and I could almost swear that the Goddess wore an extra special halo, thanks to the loving work of these women. I heard later that the same process is followed with gooseberries as well.

Nature seems to take extra special care of us human beings. In winter, a windfall of fruits that are harvested are full of Vitamin C. Tomatos, lemons, gooseberries make their way to every nook and corner of the markets.

Nature has a very close connection with religion. During festivals, which seem to be clustered from August to December, the doorsteps are lined with mango leaves. Any Puja in the South India usually includes coconuts which are considered to be auspicious. A traditional meal is eaten off a freshly plucked banana leaf.

The Basil (Tulasi) plant is considered to be sacred and the leaves also have many medicinal properties.

A traditional Indian woman offers betel leaves with some fruit, when a lady guest visits her home. Hindus turn Eastwards in the early morning hours to pay their respect to the Sun.

I have often listened to and read about many academic arguments which center around questioning the presence of a God.

Do you know Him? Have you seen Him? Isn't the concept of God man-made, meant for insecure people?

The fact is that most people haven't seen God and those that muster enough courage to claim that they have felt an 'aura' only receive sardonic smiles from sceptics.

Must be your mental frame of mind. You know, psychologists believe that light can play tricks and make you see things.

So most believers and God realizers have learnt to shut up, fearing that they will be deemed weak or insane if they opened up to the general public. Now no one ever questions the presence of the wind (although no one has ever really 'seen' the wind).

For some reason, God is probably the most debatable subject in the world.

Perhaps that is so because He chooses to let us mortals argue and have some fun. Perhaps He even knows that He will have the last laugh. Perhaps He is actually humoring us from up above the mountains. From within our souls. And from the lemons that gently drop to the ground.

For my part, I simpy enjoy observing all the stuff that goes on centered around God and God presence.

I love listening to carol singers who drop by my house during Christmas time. I love watching children all dressed up in new clothes during Ramzan.

I have never tired of watching my neighbor create beautiful traditional motifs with rice flour in front of her doorstep each and every day. I had watched her daughter, (who is all grown up now), mess around with rice flour in her younger days only to receive a gentle slap on her hand by a vigilant mother.

So I wonder, why do sceptics spend all this time on proving the absence or simply disproving the presence of God, when they can enjoy so much along the way of knowing?

Why can't they shop for those lemons and enjoy lighting those wicks? If anything, they'd enliven any cold foggy morning...