Faith in Tight Quarters

A common practice among Hindu families is to have a designated puja ghar (room for worship) in their houses. Families that live in smaller houses with fewer rooms, typically substitute this with a corner, rather than an entire room. We call it the mandir (temple) of the house.

In my childhood home, there were three such rooms. One was fairly large, used by my grandmother every day for her morning and evening prayer rituals and for worship rituals on religious holidays. Every morning, my grandmother hobbled outdoors, picking a few flowers and dropping them into a basket for the offerings that followed her morning prayers. One could hear her chanting mantras or humming devotional songs softly. Also heard was the clinging of a small bell she used at the end of the ritual. Even now, at the age of 93, she still carries on her prayer rituals twice a day.

Another room, slightly smaller in size, was used by my father (and on occasion my mother) to meditate every morning before he went to work. This one was located at the far side of the house, a bit away from the other rooms, so as to be undisturbed by the sounds of talk and activities going on in the main house. A third room is used by my aunt twice a day for prayer and meditation. This one is more like a spare room of the house, used for storing extra furniture, with one dedicated corner for the temple. To this list of sacred spaces, I would add a certain banana tree in the front yard, complete with a floor mat and a seat cushion for days when outdoor prayer is preferred.

As the tendrils of time wound through the corridors of my house, these hallowed spaces became more than physical corners or rooms; they became portals to transcendence, where the mundane meets the divine. The resonance of my grandmother's morning chants, the quietude of my father's meditations, and the soft hymns from my aunt's sanctuary echoed the heartbeat of daily life. Through these rituals, these moments of quiet communion with the divine, we carved out sanctuaries not only for prayer but for introspection, gratitude, and a deep connection with the sacred.

The beauty of having a sacred space within the confines of our homes lies not just in the bricks and mortar or the arrangement of icons but in the ritualisation of spirituality. Moreover, these sacred spaces extend beyond the walls of a room or the shade of a banana tree; they permeate the very rhythm of our daily routines. They make God not an abstract concept confined to scriptures or temple visits but an intimate participant in our lives, a presence woven into the fabric of our quotidian existence. 

In the evolving landscape of modern living, where urban spaces shrink and homes become more compact, the tradition of assigning a specific space for prayer seems to be fading. As the upcoming generations find themselves amidst a challenge to preserve the sacred spaces, the rituals that marked the heartbeat of familial devotion gradually fade, leaving behind a poignant echo of a tradition that once graced every home. Uninformed of the enriching worship rituals that were an integral part of upbringing, our children, no doubt wealthy in all other respects, inherit a new kind of spiritual poverty. The connection with the divine finds itself remembered only on religious holidays or occasional temple visits, and the echoes of prayer, with time, become quieter still.