The face of God.....

For the multitude of us God usually signifies some deity or individual specific to our own religion, the respect, fear or love for whom is ingrained in our hearts and minds, perhaps from the very childhood....
As a child, I remember being told by my Maa that God had a book wherein He kept a record of your deeds- good ones with golden stars and bad ones with black stars...... From time to time God went through the records and if the black stars outnumbered the golden ones, then that was when some punishment was meted out and ofcourse a reward if the opposite was true. I had a tough time deciding whether taking pickles from the jar (ofcourse while maa was taking a siesta) to go with a romantic book on a lazy Sunday afternoon amounted to a sin which needed confessing to Maa (and risk a scolding) or was so small an aberration that God would overlook it, in the true spirit of a SPORTING PARENT !
My maa hails from a family of true blue brahmins for whom rituals are almost or perhaps more important than the act of connecting to God( through prayers, mantras or worship...).
During my early childhood, I remember hanging around Maa when she performed Puja, the strange sanskrit mantras uttered from her lips sounded enchanting and I tried hard to commit them to my memory. On days when my school was off I liked to clean up the temple corner ( which Maa had done up in the auspicious North-east corner of the bedroom), decorate the deities with fresh flowers plucked from the garden and sandalwood paste that Maa prepared, and light the incense sticks. The resulting ambience of peace, calm and that special wonderful "holy" smell was something which touched me even at that age.

Now, after two decades and then some more years later, I am hard pressed for time to even spend a couple of minutes with folded hands in front of the innumerable deities that Maa has kept on adding to her worship corner( so much so that Baba has thoughtfully made for her a separate Puja room) ..................... I have to rush to office and reach on time, braving and defeating the morning traffic snarls, ready and feed my three year old before depositing her to her preschool, remember to take the cheque book for the credit card payment lest I be fined an unthinkable amount.....all these rushing in and out of my mind, rendering all my efforts at connecting with God the "old way" , a "mission impossible" kind of feat. I tell myself I will reach out to God later and I also know God will understand.......
....With knowledge that is born of having walked the earth for three decades, I now connect to God in the most simple and unelaborate of ways....... when I sink gratefully into the vacated window seat of the state bus, knowing I will have an hour of unadulterated peace, the morning breeze caressing my face, soulful tunes from FM soothing my morning nerves, my eyes catching the glimpse of the little boy gleefully playing with his sister in front of his unassuming home on the roadside, I thank God from the bottom of my heart, for His boundless mercy in giving me this life and the wonderful feeling of being alive. The small precious moment snatched from the hands of a demanding and unforgiving day comes back to me...... my daughter looking straight into my eyes,with an angelic smile on her face.... the first thing that met my eyes when I opened them in the morning,................ to me that is the face of my God..... for me to love and cherish and worship like never before.........................................