As-salaamu alaykum,
Ash-hadu alla ilaha illaAllah wa ash-hadu anna muhammadun rasuluAllah
This is the story of my coming to belief and absolute/unshakeable certainty. It is completely entwined with my life journey and my literal body. Or so i think, at least. So, I feel I must share it here. Because I'm all alone with no Muslim brothers or sisters around me with whom I can share this because if I do it might disturb their regular routine to read this long story. So I need to share with strangers. My final submission to God has happened in total isolation after reading the 1st two chapters of the Qur'an. I read in English, with transliteration, and I am still in the process of reading it. I have not finished it yet to be frank but I have absolutely no doubt about it (apparently, all i needed were the first two chapters). I am doing this slowly also because I love it and I'm relishing each and every word, makes me feel like rolling around in ecstasy to be frank 😂. I have literally fallen in love. Since then, the only people who know of this (and are trying to understand) are all pagans and polytheists, they do not understand the concept of One God at all and it becomes very hard to communicate and eventually it feels like I'm an alien. Which is ironic because faith and belief are things that should connect one to the larger stream of life and here i am losing friends and family and actually feeling lighter and happier because I literally have been unable to stand idol-worshipping ever since I was a kid.
This brings me to my childhood. I was born in an Upper Caste (Kayastha), hindi-speaking, middle-class, joint family (grandfather, uncles, aunts all living together about 10 people in the house at any time). I have been raised by a devout mother and an atheist/agnostic father. In Hinduism, you really don't have to believe anything to be a Hindu, just follow the rituals. There have been sects of Hinduism in the past that have neither believed in God nor Revelation, having a materialist philosophy of the world, and they have also been included as Hindu (Charavaka, Lokayata, Buddhism, Jainism etc).
Coming back to my childhood, since a very early age my mother taught me to pray. She couldn't teach me any set prayer though because there is no one way in Hinduism, there are set rituals and hymns but no set prayers. The one thing I remember again and again is prostration. We had a tiny temple in the house, like many people, and the first act of worship I was told to perform was to prostrate myself before the idols. I loved doing that, to lie down flat and face down and hands joined. That was the only way I understood to pray. But I had no words to speak. And the hymns made no sense.
An aside about my mother, she is trained in Hindustani Classical music (she did her masters in it) and is a retired teacher of music. She was raised by a VERY devout man, who was a professor of fine arts. He used to get up at 4 in the morning, wake up all his children to pray, then practice their arts and studies. My mother prays everyday and fasts 3 times a week. She has been doing this all her life because loves doing it.
Now, I studied in a missionary school. And there, I was being raised half-Christian in a way. The first time I saw the story of the Passion, I remember being terrified and awe-struck at the same time. It filled me with a LOT of dread, for some reason reason I couldn't understand. How could this be done to a man like that? My childhood brain couldn't process. We had the Cross in every classroom back then (not anymore, though, I don't know why). I loved the hymns and the prayers. I still sing them. These were the first prayers and hymns I could understand and relate to.
As I grew, I became increasingly disgusted with idol-worship, already i could see the problems with it. Problems with the very concept. And studying in a Christian school didn't help because you know how Monotheists look at idol-worship and paganism. And it concurred with my REASON. Moreover, I was passionate about Science, History and English Literature at school which promoted atheistic/agnostic thinking. Eventually, I entered a reluctant disbelief. I still could not accept atheism because it didn't agree with my reason either. In this way I journeyed from innocence to agnosticism.
By the time I was finishing school I was a video-game addict and spent all my time bunking school entirely, stealing money from home to pay at the game-parlor, eating junk food, and just playing games from 8am to 8pm. In this way, I ruined my 11th and 12th grade completely and was barely able to pass school. Thank heavens i did though because if I hadn't my father was willing to throw me out of the house 😂. I was a student of Biology and wanted to become a doctor but couldn't study, since I have never been the diligent kind. Eventually I entered a law school, it is a VERY prestigious law school (ranks 3rd or 4th in the country) this made my parents happy again. I cracked the exam without even studying, like i said I am not very diligent, but i have always been very bright and sharp and learn quickly. So, I started law school but my heart wasn't in it. Frankly, my heart was nowhere to be found, except in hanging out with my friends listening to music and smoking weed (I've never liked alcohol though, I hate it). So that was how spent some crucial years of my life very irresponsibly.
In law school, i kept getting debarred from the exams because of lack of attendance and eventually quit it after 3 years. Everyone was pretty mad. I wanted to study philosophy by that time. But no university would take me. Eventually, I gave the English Literature exam at Jamia Millia Islamia and was accepted. I had topped the entrance exam and interview there. However, my lack of hard work and abhorrence of classrooms again fucked up my life and it took me 6 years to graduate from a 3 year course. BUT it was there at Jamia that i first started living with in very close proximity with Muslims and actually started understanding Islam, I was surrounded by the culture now. It felt like home away from home, because I am from Bhopal (a city in the state of Madhya Pradesh/Central Provice, India) and Bhopal has a sizeable Muslim population and a deep connection with Islam. I made my first best friend there at Jamia. We used to sit for hours everyday just yakking, he loved video-games as well, from an animators perspective, and also biology, evolution, and history so I finally found a friend to talk with. And it is from him that I came to know about many things Islamic/Abrahamic. He believed in God but was not a practicing Muslim. And I liked that because I didn't like organized religions by that time. By this time, I had become sort of a "libertarian".
Years passed. Finally, I passed out of Jamia and began my Master's in English Literature from Delhi University. Again a VERY prestigious place because I secured 4th rank in the entrance. But then like previously got debarred and failed exams badly and took 4 years to complete a 2 year degree. This ended with my first job as an Assistant Editor. At 29 years of age. At DUni, the very first year I joined a study group called "The Bible as Literature" this is where I first started reading the Bible. I wanted to read it with guidance and here was my chance. Though, I went to a missionary school i had never read it. In the study group we read the Torah part of the Old Testament alongside commentary and everything, diligently. I also took up Buddhist Studies as part of my Master's. For the next few years I kept meditating on all that I had understood by that time. I eventually rejected Buddhism (I can elaborate on the reasons why Buddhism is wrong, but not here). I realised I was still trying to find an "answer" to something, how to live (?). A religious answer no doubt, and it was a religious question. Both the question and answer, unformulated and inarticulatable. But my journey from disbelief to faith had begun.
After a few years, things happened in my life that made me eventually become clinically depressed (diagnosed). Around this time, there was a Gideon's Bible i had found in the hotel room where I was staying at the time. And I thought of turning to the New Testament. To find "an answer" to my "problem". Reading the Gospels was a moving experience that had me in tears and showed me a light at the end of the tunnel. Over time, my meditation on Jesus as the Word brought results and slowly but surely I was being lifted out of my despair. However, there was still something missing. I couldn't feel completely at ease. Something very essential was missing. A guidance. The Word of Jesus was incomplete, to me.
A few years passed, and I moved back from Delhi to Bhopal in 2020 due to the pandemic. Now, here I was gifted with a Qur'an by a pagan friend who had no need for it but had picked it up because it was free and looked beautiful. But that guy is not interested in reading ANYTHING, so he gave it to me who loved to read.
After Diwali, a festival Hindus celebrate, we Kayasthas, the caste of scribes, make a special worship. Our caste reveres a "god" called Chitragupta Maharaj (the name has many "hidden" meanings) and we believe that we have descended from that god (like i said, we are upper caste). He is the god who keeps the accounts the deeds of men and is the secretary of the Warden of the Underworld (Yama). Following this, our traditional jobs have been administration and accounting. We were the first people in India to learn Persian and all other foreign languages so that administration could be done (we have been doing this since 2 millenia 😂). We worship the Pen and Paper on that day. We write "Om" and keep our pens/pencils and copies in the tiny temple and refrain from writing anything that day. Only worship the Word. But very few Kaysthas today understand this. Like I said I have never been able to stand idol-worshipping, or the concept of Idols in the first place. And by this time something had happened and I was already planning on reading the Qur'an. I knew enough to just start reading. And so on this day, as my way of worship, I started reading the Qur'an.
I was stunned just after the fatiha to be frank 😳 I had no idea THIS existed!! Then I kept on reading. I finished al-baqarah by the next day. Then I re-read that very day the whole thing at least 2-3 times. By the evening, I was just sitting stunned and dreamy. It was like the greatest burden of my life had been lifted from me. I was sooo dreamy, I remember. Just kept sitting on my bed in silence for at least 3-4 hrs. Eventually, the first question that comes to my mind is "what the fuck year is this?????" Then I looked up the Hijri calendar and realised that civilization began for sure 1400 years ago. It was like waking from a deep slumber. A slumber of centuries. And felt completely awake. Since that day, my life has begun. I found myself in the Qur'an. My purpose, which is to pray, and my name, which was always my name, from aya 282 of albaqarah, and I understood I was a Katib (scribe), this particular katib mentioned along with his duty, this is what I was and am. I was shown the world, and my place in the world. The Qur'an baptized me once and for all. My life has, finally, begun and I can't tell you how happy it makes me. My eyes have been opened by a miracle of God. This is all I wanted to share, for now.
Allah hafiz.
PS Please feel free to leave any comments that strike you at first reading this, positive or negative. To hear from someone, that was why I wrote this huge wall of text that was, frankly, very difficult to write. It would be nice to hear some voices back.
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