Meditation, An Island in Time

Every day, at dawn and dusk, my father sits in front of the small altar in the

(prayer) room of our home. The altar is made up of images and statuettes of Hindu gods such as Shiva and his wife Uma, their children Ganesh and Kartikeya, Ram, his wife Sita and brother Laxman, and some venerated gurus.

My father wears a crisp white cotton dhoti, a sarong-like outfit, having bathed prior to entering the puja room. When he dips a small copper spoon in a small copper vessel full of water to take the

(three sips of consecrated water), there are three small hollow tinkling sounds. He sprinkles his body and the surrounding area with a few drops of water.

My father then uses both hands to make a series of gestures. One looks like a fish, some others involve interlocking fingers, or tapping the index and forefinger of right hand on his left palm and snapping them in a circle. Thereafter, he takes a rosary made up of 108

beads in his left hand. (Rudraksh beads, the seeds of a tree with the botanical name

, are venerated in the Hindu tradition. Rudra is another name for Shiva, and the bead's name translates to Rudra's eye. The rudraksh is said to be his most potent manifestation.) And over the next 30 to 40 minutes, my father sits silently and chants a mantra or God's name for each rudraksh bead on the rosary.

A devout Hindu, my father performs these rituals, which comprise the sandhya puja, without fail. It's his duty as a Brahmin, a member of the Hindu priestly caste, invested unto him when he received his sacred thread and the sacred Gayatri mantra (the 24-syllable Vedic mantra for spiritual evolution and liberation) from his father.

As a child, I was fascinated by my father's morning ritual. My father made my sister and me study in front of him while he carried out his prayers. In between memorizing multiplication charts and figuring out algebraic equations, I got to know the rhythm of the ritual. Occasionally, I felt the spray of water as he sprinkled it about himself. Yet I never quite understood the meaning of it all.

Both my parents tried their hand at teaching me to meditate during my adolescence. I think their aim was to calm my raging teenage hormones.

My mother started on her path as a yoga teacher with me and my sister. We were reluctant students. Despite my teenage resistance to instruction from a parent, the yogic asanas (postures) were kind of fun. It was almost a challenge to see how flexible my body was. While I never did well in gymnastics at school, such as handstands or cartwheels, I could hold a yoga posture pretty decently.

The meditation portion of mum's mandatory yoga classes was boring. She tried her best to get us to sit cross-legged, ideally in the lotus position, concentrate, clear our minds, and think of nothing as we intoned Aum, the most supreme and sacred syllables of Hinduism.

But I just couldn't get to the deeper, meditative level. Although I tried desperately hard to follow mum's instructions, not more than five minutes passed before various thoughts would start crowding my mind. An incident from school. A scene from a favorite TV show. An annoying tune that just wouldn't get out of my head. Eventually, I'd just give up.

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