Tanya asked what an Atheist Hindu was...

..and I told her I didn't really know, but I would try and think it through. She asked in the context of me claiming that my Pundit acknowledging 'Atheist Hindu' as a thing. It's something I've been thinking about a bit recently, as I try to make sense of the difficulties I face and when I revel in feeling like I am fulfilling my dharma as I study nursing and raise my kids. I was brought up by a non practicing C of E father, a mother lapsed from her strict Methodist upbringing to vague eastern hippiehood and I went to an anthroposophical school. I was not destined to get all fundamental about any religion, but to give all of them a certain grudging respect.

I don't think there is a divine plan, or really a divine at all. I don't believe in anything supernatural, but I know there is stuff that science can't explain (yet). I suspect our minds are more powerful than we give them credit for.

Hindu gods can be approached as a manifestation of a feeling, or a desire, or even perhaps a social construct. As such I give a respectful little (mental) nod and a wink to Ganesha (Remover of Obstacles) before I start some new endevour. In distracted moments I wonder how I would depict Saraswati (Wisdom and Learning) if I were creating a likeness of her (traditionally she has a musical instrument, but that doesn't work for me). Really what I'm pondering in these moments is what obstacles I may have to overcome or the nature of wisdom

I look at my life in terms of fulfilling my Dharma (looking for, and following, my life's path). I don't believe in literal reincarnation, but I do believe that in so far as our actions impact the world, those impacts can easily last beyond our deaths and they are something to be mindful of.

Please, I know very little about Hinduism really, so standard disclaimer: all errors are entirely my own. 

If you aren't comfortable with me claiming Hindu status then I am perfectly comfortable sticking with Atheism

Short post: atheism, kids, diwali and my nursing studies

I'm kinda joking with that 'short' part, but considering almost all the big life issues are jammed into the post title, and some of them are somewhat contradictory it will be short. You will be pleased to know I don't have anything to say about politics today.

Have I mentioned before about how I sort of consider myself an atheist Hindu (atheist first, Hindu second)? It came about when the wise Punditji who performed our wedding ceremony telling me, when I mentioned I was an atheist, that the Hindus 'have room' for that but the Christians probably didn't. It's only relevant because I am still trying to work out how to talk about religion with my kids. There is nothing better able to to joyfully force one to consider one's own position on difficult issues than trying to explain where you stand to some bright and inquisitive school kids. In this case I was explaining to Asher why we celebrate Diwali ( AKA Deepavali and other spellings and pronunciations. translating Sanskrit into the various Indian languages and then into words that can be spoken in English is tricky). We bought some lottery tickets to give to Sanjay and his dad as Diwali gifts and a lovely candle for Sanjay's mother.

It also seemed to be a good time to talk about the bigger meanings of the festival, so I reminded him of the two stories I know about Diwali, both familiar to him from 'Amma tell me about Diwali' by B. Mathur. One of the stories sees the goddess coming into the home of a poor woman, working late even on a festival day, and granting her wealth. The other story, the main story, is from the Ramayana and describes people lighting lamps to welcome their banished King and Queen home after fourteen years in exile (er, that was... brief. It's a massive, intense, tragic, brilliant epic!). I was trying to think through appropriate ways to talk about the meaning of these stories as I was talking to Asher and I came to the idea that they are both about shining a light on the path of right - either in terms of personal hard work or using the ancient city of Ayodhya as a metaphor for self and the lights help to lead us to 'right action' - whatever right action looks like to us.

Which brings me, neatly, back to my nursing course. People keep asking me how my course is going; everyone from the crossing supervisor at the kids' school through to my family and my therapist mentions it and for sure sometimes it's just politeness but often people want to really know about the course and how I'm feeling about it, and wondering if I'm going to enjoy clinical nursing. I generally answer with a flippant comment about being busy, stressed or the fact that I've just finished first your again (!) and sometimes I go to say 'I should have done it years ago' but the reality is slightly more difficult to talk about. I feel like whether I enjoy it or not is almost irrelevant. I am fulfilling my dharma. I am on my path. The course is tough, tougher than my first degree and although I don't have the memory I did then I am wiser. I still agonize over my assignments. But whatever stress and drama it causes me, I am where I'm meant to be. I don't think I should have done nursing straight out of school - my dad was very well known in the field and in my 20s I wouldn't have been able to answer the 'but why didn't you study medicine' without shame. I didn't get the marks and also I wanted to distance myself from my family, not follow them into the healthcare field. So now, in my forties, with ten years of tech career, then ten years of mum-ing I am into my next phase - nursing. Maybe for ten years. And because I spent some time thinking about Diwali, and talking to my kids about the idea of a life path and dharma, next time someone asks me how my degree is going I can reply that I am on my path, without feeling awkward or being flippant or dismissive.

Happy Diwali!

Tomorrow is Diwali and here is another post about me trying to deal with being an atheist who lives in a predominantly Christian country trying to raise kids to have a sense of Hindu traditions. Today I went fossicking around the interwebs looking for information on celebrating Diwali with kids (yeah, it is the day before I clearly like to be prepared). I didn't have a clear idea of what I was looking for but rangoli colouring in pages, while nice, weren't quite it. Eventually I found I wonderful blog post from Devis with babies which was just what I was looking for. So, in the spirit of Insta-Culture Ways to Celebrate Diwali With Your Child* I'm going to list the things we do (and the things I plan to do from next year onwards).

1. Lights! It's all about light, so we already light candles and leave the doors open for Lakshmi but next year I'll put up the Christmas lights (and, because I love having fairy lights up over summer they will probably stay up over Christmas and maybe until the end of daylight savings). I'd like to get some diyas, or make some with the kids too. I'm terrified of fireworks, and nervous of sparklers so I've bought a bunch of glow sticks so the kids get some 'light' to play with. Maybe in a few years they can play with sparklers (while I hide inside and don't watch).
2. Sweets! Next after the lights in importance seems to be sweets, so I'll try making something sweet with the kids next year. I find any cake or biscuit based around almonds or other nuts to be appealing to my Desi inlaws so today I made almond and cranberry biscuits which have an almost burfi like middle, but are far more suited to my white-girl palate. I'll take them tomorrow when we go and visit my inlaws for dinner.
3. Presents are important for kids and we explained Diwali to 4 year old Asher as 'Indian Christmas' which only works because we don't really let Jesus in to our Christmas celebrations, so he thinks of Christmas as 'the festive season' and not a religious event. Last year I got both kids a little present and this year I'll do the same.
4. New clothes are a Diwali tradition too, and this year I didn't think to get new outfits but I'll try to remember next year (remind me!). Maybe the new clothes will come to be our traditional Diwali gift for the kids. I always wear traditional Indian outfits at Diwali, even though we just have dinner at home with family, and tomorrow is no exception - although I don't have a new outfit, which would be more appropriate.
5. Decorating the house is another Diwali tradition and I didn't even think about it this year, but next year I might try a few Diwali crafts with the kids. Perhaps I'll hang up a Bandanwar (door hanging) or try doing a rangoli with the kids and I'll definitely go with the fairy lights.
6. Games, particularly gambling games, are traditional at Diwali (because of the association with Lakshmi the goddess of wealth and abundance) and I'd like to remember to play boardgames, dice or cards with the kids at Diwali. Maybe when they get a bit older we can introduce a simple gambling game (like 'Queens' which is a game traditionally played by my mother's family, but I can't find any reference to it online).

Please feel free to remind me next year to get a bit organised a bit earlier! What traditions do you follow through the year? Are there any other non-Indians who celebrate Diwali?

Kiran's Mundan: After

It was a good day. The ceremony, inside because of the threat of rain, went well - there were three pundits, fruit, chanting, fire, no shoes and Asher running around taking photos. The ceremony took a little over an hour and Kiz stayed pretty quiet throughout. I bribed him by shoving raisins in his mouth.

After the ceremony we shaved the little guy's head. My 'aunty' Margaret did the shave and Kiz stayed still and quiet. After the shave there was food and drink and lots of exhausting socialising. People were lovely and complimented me on my outfit (I gave credit to Tim and Jen who sent it from Singapore every time) and asked me if we were thinking of having more kids (it's unlikely we'll have more).

Now it's all over and I'm so tired I'm quivering. Kiz is asleep, Asher is staying out at Turramurra with his grandparents and I've finished the piece of toast I had for dinner. I'm going to leave the mess and slink off to bed as soon as I've finished my herbal tea.

Kiran's Mundan: Before

My baby is losing his hair tomorrow, and he'll no longer be a baby when it's gone. Tomorrow is Kiran's mundan where I (symbolically) lose a baby and gain a toddler. Considering he's almost certainly my last baby that's *it* for me in terms of parenting babies. Unsurprisingly I'm feeling a bit maudlin and nostalgic-in-advance (there's probably a word for that) about the next step in our journey as a family. I'm going to miss my baby and I'm going to miss the special joys of being a mother to a baby.

Tomorrow morning there will be a ceremony with the Pundit at my inlaws place. There will be a hundred or two guests. There will be lunch. Then there will be our little Kiran as a child, not a baby anymore. The next step is a tough one for me because I've always always found toddlers tough going - the neediness, the stickyness, the looniness - and it was only as I parented Asher that I realised that they also have their good points. They are hilarious, loving and watching them learn is better than watching TV because there is *always* something going on.

And so, family life moves on to the next stage. I'll put an update here or perhaps I'll only manage to put pictures up on Flickr.

Is love really colourblind? Is the easter bunny an athiest?

The things kids notice, and fail to notice, are really really weird. I've been reading the wonderful Peter's Cross Station and have been inspired to look for ways to talk to Asher about race so when Asher mentioned Trisha from his Play School DVD I saw my opportunity. We were at the cafe yesterday morning and he was talking about the DVD and I asked him what Trisha looked like. He replied that she wore a purple shirt, which is quite true, but not quite what I was expecting. I agreed that she did and then mentioned that her skin looked quite dark brown and asked him if he'd noticed. He said he hadn't so I then started chattering about how his daddy had dark brown skin too, and I had very light brown skin and he and Kiran have medium brown skin. I don't think I did particularly well, but at least I've broached the topic. He's barely noticing gender, so the fact that he doesn't notice 'race' isn't that surprising to me. I'd like him to hear about this stuff from us, rather than hear things of dubious veracity in the playground.

The other topic thats been on my mind a lot recently (particularly with all the chat about Richard Dawkins in the media) is kids and religion and, more specifically, lack of it and how that fits in with a childhood in a nominally Christian country. I'm an athiest and Sanjay is (he's lying on the couch and I just asked him) an agnostic. My parents are nominally Christian and Sanjay's parents are Hindu, or Sikh (the distinction is blurry to me) and I'd like my kids to understand their cultural heritage, but I'm not keen for them to be indoctrinated into a belief system. So, with all this in mind, when we walked past the local church on Sunday and Asher mentioned that there were a lot of people around I chirpily told him that the people had been in the church because it was Sunday, and that on Sunday people who were Christians sometimes went to church to pray to god. I reminded him that he had been to the Gurdwarra with his Grandpa Sham and told him that that's where Grandpa Sham went to pray. The poor kid didn't really understand what I was blathering on about and just said "Mm-hm" in an agreeable tone and that was that.

Luckily the Easter Bunny is about as religious as the Tooth Fairy (or Santa Claus, I guess) so we can get into the easter spirit with massive amounts of chocolate and perhaps sugar fuelled tantrums.

Not a baby anymore

On Sunday when he had his Mundan saṃskāra Asher officially left behind his baby self. The wonderful Rami (The same pundit who officiated our wedding. He has his own website if you want to know more) explained to us that this was the beginning of his spiritual life and the official end of babyhood. It was a lovely ceremony, Asher was amazingly calm and good (which I attribute to Pundit-ji's chanting) and afterwards we ate great food from Billu's catering and chatted while kids ran around and pestered their parents to be allowed in the pool. I think that as far as these big Indian parties go it was fun, and everyone seemed to be having a reasonably good time. There will be photos up on Flickr in a day or two.

The actual hair removal happened after the ceremony - Tim used Elia's clippers to give Asher a 'Number 1' but the lack of sleep, heat and scary buzzing was a bit to much for Asher by that point so the haircut's a bit patchy. I'm going to drop into my hairdresser this afternoon and see if we can't smooth it out a bit - we don't want the little guy looking like he has mange! He does look quite different now though - less like a little Martin child, like me at the same age, and more like a Chhabra. His head is larger than I thought it was and his jaw is somehow fuller. At first he felt a bit like a stranger and I think it's going to take me a few more days to get used to.







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Tomorrow we get the keys to our new house. I would say that posting here is going to be patchy until we settle in but it's already so patchy that I can't see anyone even noticing. I'll let you know what I think of the new place once we've moved.