Sweet Boondi

It had been raining for two days. The river behind the Hanuman mandir, which was dry throughout the year, now had a steady stream of water. Its gentle burble bounced off the sleeping ears of the people of Ramanpur.

A fog had settled over the town, hampering visibility and lowering the temperature. While the rest of the town welcomed dusk cosily from under their blankets, Shrishti and her mother walked up the steps of the Hanuman mandir.

Usually, on Tuesday mornings, several devotees flocked about here, but the cold and rain had forced them to stay put. Shrishti knew her mother to have an undying devotion to Lord Hanuman. Nobody she knew was as devoted as her mother. No amount of harsh weather could prevent her from coming to the mandir.

“Hanuman will protect me,” she’d say, and head to the mandir through storms, floods, and heatwaves.

While her mother visited the temple daily, she only took Shrishti on Tuesdays; the day dedicated to the worship of Hanuman. Her mother thought that to be enough for a 14-year-old. One had to wake up before sunrise to visit the temple, and doing so daily would hamper Shrishti’s education, which was something her mother took very seriously.

Halfway up the stairs, Shrishti stopped and looked up at the mandir, panting. It was situated atop a tiny hill, and overlooked the entire town. Shristi dreaded these stairs, especially on cold mornings such as this.

“Hurry up!” her mother shouted, looking back. She was already at the entrance.

Shrishti soldiered on. The main attraction for her at the mandir was always the special Tuesday prasad; sweet boondi—deep-fried chickpea flour pearls dipped in sugar syrup.

For her they were like miniature ladoos. They had a crispy outer coat and were soft on the inside. Every time she bit into them, their flavourful sweetness burst into her mouth, making her want more.

But her mother never bought extra. It cost fifty rupees for a plate containing a packet of boondi, a piece of cut coconut, a small banana, agarbattis, and some jasmines. The young boy behind the counter never gave away extra boondi, even if one was willing to pay. They’d have to buy a whole new plate if they wanted more, which her mother was not willing to do. There was only enough money for prasad, not leisure.

They took off their chappals and walked down a corridor which led to the main area of the mandir. Once there, they washed hands and headed to the prasad counter. Her mother placed their bright red umbrella on the counter and collected the prasad.

They went to the murti of Hanuman and handed the plate over to the pundit; a pale man who, during the early hours of the day, wore a white vest and orange dhoti. He took one boondi out of the packet and placed it right at the murti’s mouth, feeding Hanuman. Shrishti closely watched the murti’s mouth for any movement.

Raja, a boy who used to be in Shrishti’s class, had once bragged to her about seeing Hanuman’s mouth move when the pundit fed him boondi.

“What about the pundit? He didn’t see anything?” Shrishti had asked him.

“He was reciting some mantras with his eyes closed,” Raja replied confidently, as if he had rehearsed it, and ran his fingers through his oiled-up hair, ensuring that his side-partitioned hairstyle was still intact. He exuded an air of confidence too good for his looks or behaviour.

Shrishti thought he looked like a rat. Two of his front teeth protruded out a little, and he had a narrow face with loose spectacles perched over a tiny freckled nose. Black threads held his spectacles in place, which he never took off, making them an indistinguishable part of his face. Acne across his forehead had caused pimples that in the sunlight appeared like the peaks of the Himalayas seen from above. His mother tediously made his hair every morning, and called him handsome before he left for school.

“Mera laal, mera hero,” she’d say, caressing his cheeks, and he’d blush.

His mother ensured that her son walked like a king in school, proud of his hair and looks. And for a while, he did, but his confidence shattered upon entering seventh grade, when Jaydeep Tomar, the PT teacher, took a class.

With Raja’s hair being so distinctly side-partitioned, an encounter with the vicious Jaydeep meant trouble, and embarrassment.

“The entire river Ganga could flow through that gap,” he said to Raja, pointing towards the wide patch of scalp visible in the middle of his oily hair. The class burst out laughing.

“A similar thing like your hair happened to India in 1947 that led to the birth of miserable Pakistan,” Jaydeep continued, grinning proudly at his joke. The class laughed further. Jaydeep gave them a moment to settle, like an experienced comedian, and then picked his next subject to bully.

Since then, everyone in school called Raja “India-Pakistan”. He lost all his confidence. His mother, who he used to blush at every morning, he now cursed.

Luckily, he only had to suffer for a year more. His father pulled him out of school so he could assist him at his kirana store. Since then, Shristi only saw him when she went to the bazar. She never waved hi, and he didn’t even notice her, mostly busy with work or hooked to his phone. But what he had said about Hanuman’s mouth moving never left her.

Since then, every time she went to the temple, she watched for any kind of movement from the murti, but nothing happened. She wanted to ask the pundit whether he had ever seen the mouth move, but could never muster the courage to do so.

She knew that idols weren’t supposed to move. They were nothing but representations of the Gods themselves, who existed in other realms, far away from Earth yet keeping a watchful eye on humans at all times.

“God is always watching,” her father would often say.

It was important for him to tell her about God’s watchful eye, to ingrain it in her head, because she spent most days unsupervised, with her mother away at work as a librarian at the local library run by a NGO, and him away in Delhi working as a driver.

She spent years as a god-fearing child, feeling guilty every time she stepped slightly out of line. For her, “God is always watching” meant a constant state of anxiety. Pressure to do good, always.

Her palms sweat while she wrote exams, leaving questions she didn’t know the answer to, but never cheating like her friends did. She spent sleepless nights thinking about sin, and God, and religion. Her doubts arrived not from some academic book or knowledge about atheism, or agnostics, but from within herself, from not wanting to be anxious all the time. Her own insecurities pushed her to think, to question. She didn’t want to not steal out of fear of getting caught, she wanted to not steal because she herself questioned it morally, irrespective of the risk of getting caught.

Once, during dinner, she expressed these doubts to her mother.

Her mother stopped eating and looked at her.

“First of all, don’t ever say all this in front of your father. He won’t tolerate it,” she said sternly.

Shrishti nodded.

Pointing towards Shrishti’s notebook full of maths sums lying open right next to her plate, her mother gently continued, “All this, it’s good, it’s important. Unlike your father, I completed school so I know how it helps in life. But education…it’s just knowledge, while religion, and faith, that’s truth, and you’ll soon learn the difference. Don’t abandon it so early, keep both close.”

Unconvinced, Shrishti had pondered over her mother’s words, but she continued to feel that instead of leading her towards truth, religion strayed her away from it, away from herself. The problem was, she didn’t take much interest in her education either. She felt lost, like a sailor floating in an endless sea with nothing to grab onto, nothing to lead him back to shore. For her mother’s sake, she kept going to the temple and praying. But as her anxiety grew, she slowly lost faith.

But she never stopped waiting for the mouth to open.

She greedily eyed the boondi packets stacked on the counter. Her mother nudged her to pay attention to the rituals. The pundit placed a few jasmines by the murti’s feet. He then poured some sacred water into their hands which they sipped and then sprinkled over their heads. They were offered some Kumkum, which they dipped the ring fingers of their right hands in and put tikas on their respective foreheads.

Once this was done, Shrishti followed her mother as she walked around the murti clockwise while reciting the Hanuman Chalisa. They paid respects to the murtis of all the other Gods as well. Every temple that Shristhi had been to had murtis of various Gods related to the one the temple was dedicated to. She didn’t know whether this was because a God alone in a temple would get lonely, or whether the Gods left out would feel hurt, or disrespected.

In the end, on a muddy and ash-laden surface within which several agarabttis were already embedded, Shrishti and her mother added two more.

With everything done, they walked back down the corridor at the end of which they had taken their shoes off. Shrishti’s mother realized that she had forgotten the umbrella on the prasad counter. She sent Shrishti back to fetch it.

Shrishti entered the mandir to find nobody there. The pundit and boy at the counter would have retreated to their homes behind the temple for breakfast.

The umbrella was at the counter. Shrishti picked it up and turned to leave, but then her eyes fell upon the packets of sweet boondi. They had kept the prasad out in the open, probably not expecting anybody to steal from a temple. Shrishti did not want to, but she knew this was her only chance to get extra boondi. Just a couple of packets, or maybe three, and she would have enough for a week.

She checked her surroundings once more to confirm that nobody was around. Her hands shook as she silently picked up three packets and rolled them up in her chunni. Before leaving, she shot a glance towards the Hanuman murti.

Hanuman’s eyes were directed straight towards her. They had shifted from their central resting place, and were now peering into her soul, catching her red-handed— catching her stealing, sinning.

She stood there, perplexed. God had caught her. The thing she dreaded the most had come true.

She hurriedly removed the boondi packets from her chunni, placed them back on the counter and ran out of the temple, not looking back to see if the eyes followed.

Hanuman had caught her. He had looked straight into her eyes. For a brief moment, he had come to life. Was such the magnitude of the act she had committed, that it summoned Hanuman? Was she a terrible person? All those years of unlearning religion came crumbling down in front of her. Once again, she quivered at the thought of God.

When her mother offered her boondi later, from the one packet she had bought, Shrishti refused.

“Really? But this is your favourite,” her mother said.

“I just don’t feel like having it right now,”

“Acha have one at least. You mustn’t say no to prasad,” she stuffed one boondi into Shristhi’s mouth. As she reluctantly chewed on it, the sweetness didn’t hit like it used to. For the first time ever, she didn’t want more boondi.

Shrishti didn’t speak much that day. She dragged herself to school, but paid no attention in classes. She was thinking too much again. For the first time in a while, she felt anxious.

She wanted to confirm what she had witnessed, and there was only one person who could do that. In the evening, making an excuse to her mother of needing an A4-sized map of India for geography class, she went to the bazar.

Raja’s father owned the most resourceful kirana store in town called Kumar Kirana. It was located right in the middle of the crowded bazar, which had shops cluttered haphazardly along a narrow street, with just enough space for one vehicle to pass at a time. There was constant noise and chaos, which had now been elevated due to the waterlogging caused by rain.

Shrishti entered the store to find Raja sitting in one corner with his feet up on the counter. He was vigorously scrolling through his phone, which his eyes were glued to. He was nothing like the Raja she remembered.

The hair wasn’t side-partitioned, it was long and straight and had streaks of artificial blonde. He wore a loose faded blue shirt which was torn around the edges, and tight jeans that showcased his skinny legs. In school he was plumpish, cheerful, and confident. All that seemed to have gone away.

“Raja,” Shrishti said softly, but he didn’t look up.

“Raja!” she said again, a little louder this time.

“Hmm…” he said, his droopy eyes still stuck to the screen.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Rajdhani maida is still out of stock. Come tomorrow.”

“What…no, I’m not here to buy anything.”

He finally looked up.

“Oh, I thought you were somebody else. What do you want?”

“You remember me right, from school?”

“Shrishti?”

She nodded.

“Do you remember when you told me that you saw Hanuman’s mouth open at the temple?”

He narrowed his eyes and looked at her, confused. She realized that his spectacles were gone. Without them, he looked like an entirely different person.

“The fuck are you talking about,”

“I just thought that now that you’re older, that we’re older, you won’t lie about it.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“But you did.”

“Then I probably would’ve been lying, to look cool or something, I don’t know. Because that never really happened,” he said, returning to his phone, not interested in further conversation.

Disappointed, Shrishti turned and started walking. She thought of telling him what she had seen, but it would seem stupid. Someone who hadn’t witnessed it themselves would never believe her.

Just as she was about to exit the store, she turned back around and asked,

“Do you believe in God?”

Raja was smiling at something on his phone. Without looking up, he said,

“Sure.”

She walked out onto the busy street. It had started to rain. Before heading home, she stopped by the stationery store to buy a map. There were no remaining geography classes that year, but her mother always demanded proof of her visits.