Can you think of a title for this one? I cant

Friday, wasn’t it a day of hair oiling back in India? I remember Ma telling me not to oil my hair on Saturday coz it was reserved for God Hanuman. There was something about him taking a oil bath on Saturdays and such. I don’t remember how that connected to not oiling my hair. Though I think she never strongly believed in it and hence wasn’t too pushy about not doing that. I also remember the long queue to the temple where people stood with oil and leaf mala to give Hanumanji oil bath. Often times the floor of the temple would be oily and slippery. I remember those little black things at the bottom of the oil vessel they handed at the store never actually fell on Hanumanji and how I always spent a few more minutes to ensure those always fell on Hanumanji. This annoyed most people behind me in the queue waiting their turn. Then came the part where you circled Hanumanji’s idol 7 times. Yes 7, not more, not less. So you keep count ok? There would be around 3 or 4 people circling Hanumanji at a time and each one reciting their own shloka, loudly enough for everyone to forget what they were reciting and start over again. Often times I either lost track of the sholka or the number of rounds completed. Unless Ma pulled me saying I started with her and we are done. Well the shloka reciting and round tracking wasn’t the only challenging part. Ensuring that your salwaar doesn’t get messy since the floor would be quite oily would be another one on the list of challenges. But the most and trust me when I say the most challenging part would be to- not slip and fall down. At one time I saw a women slip straight heading for a young college kid who also slipped dragging this other women to a dramatic fall. Me and my sis were behind them and gosh that scene was one funny picture. I don’t mean not to sympathize with them but people, people if you try walking at like some super speed, you have to carefully watch each step, don’t ya? Unless you know skating or something. The young college kid intelligently made his way straight out of the temple. Whereas the ladies ended up loudly blaming each other and the entire queue came to a halt. But even then going to temple on Saturdays was a ritual we never missed or at least tried not to.

Whenever Ma tagged along she found at least 20 people she would stop and talk to, grrrr. All the auntijis would then start the trickiest quiz. The quiz would involve some challenging questions which you try to answer with best either a yes or no. Each time the level growing tougher, question demanding more and more details. The aim was to collect as much information as possible, no harm intended. Question of the new stuff some neighbor purchased and information of how the 5th servant of some neighbour’s cousin from Vikroli quit would be provided without asking. Also there would be some critical evidence these auntijis would have such as how the women who fell, this wasn’t the first time she fell. Gosh now how does one manage to assimilate so much info I ask? Is there a stupid, stupider, stupidest kinda thing? Anywho this and lots of unwanted noise would then fall on my ears and I think my brain had tuned itself to filter this noise. But now that I think of it, the trips to temple were always fun. There would be nice vada prasad (the south Indian vada). Lots of people around, bells ringing when someone entered the temple, some dude who would ring the bell really loudly and people would look at him angrily and chant their stotra more loudly. The bhatji who seemed to be constantly in some kinda of hurry, managing his dhoti, reciting stotra and hinting people by mere looks and hand movement of where to keep the coconut, where to put the mala etc. And every now and then some dude would step to break a coconut into 2 halves and put coconut water on Hanumanji, thereby adding to the slippery floor.

Yet beyond all this, was the faith people carried with them. If you sat in the temple for a while, you would often see some youngster helping an old aunty (in her 70’s) who never missed her visit to the temple on Saturdays and never missed the 7 rounds around Hanumanji. Some stranger, a tenth grader would go around the temple distributing sweets coz he got admission in a great school. Just sitting there in the temple one could observe so much, isn’t it?