Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Nishta J. Mehra
a way that I wasn’t. While I sat behind, they walked up to the altar to
receive communion. These were the limits of my belonging.
At the same time, I relished being different. Christianity was my
exotic, but I was exotic to everyone else. My friends and classmates
started asking me questions about what I believed, how my religion
was different. I stopped taking for granted the Sanskrit prayers my
family and I said and started asking about their meaning. My parents
found books in English that retold the stories of the Rāmāyana and
the Mahābārata, Hinduism’s great epics, full of murder, intrigue, sex,
and miracles to rival the most fantastic parts of the Old Testament. As
my connection to my own religion grew, so did my fondness for highchurch
worship, the pomp and circumstance, traditional liturgy, and
booming organ. The sensory onslaught of an Episcopalian church
service is somewhat tamed-down in comparison to that of my birth
religion, but both know how to put on a good show.
At times, I struggled with just how far to join in, whether it was
all right to say “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” when I didn’t
actually believe in him. No doubt, many of my fellow classmates were
also skeptical or uncertain in their beliefs, but they had the luxury
of habit and belonging. If their internal landscape didn’t match the
external, no one was the wiser. But from the outset, I looked like a nonbeliever
and I weighed my participation very carefully. As a Hindu,
I was frustrated by the way my culture and religious traditions were
often appropriated and mishandled by outsiders. It was important to
me not to commit the same crime against Christianity.
Of course, I felt like an outsider in Hinduism too. Connected
through my parents and centuries worth of traditions, my own personal
stake in Hinduism was never as grounded as I thought it should be.
Church was more interesting than temple; at least I could understand
what everyone was saying and singing. The guilt I felt over my halfhearted
engagement was tempered by a desire to protect and uphold
my heritage, a duty which was important to me. Some first-generation
kids push as far away from the “home country” as possible; I didn’t
want to be one of them. Still, I knew that my main tie to Hinduism
was nostalgic, not immediate. And as was the case with Christianity,
my personal affiliation had everything to do with the group in which
I wanted to belong. In both religions, I felt equally at home—that is to
say, halfway like an intruder in each case.
Over time, the splitting of theological hairs became less important
to me, and the power of community, worship, and tradition took over.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 207