God, School, Law School, My Mother & Me

My faith in the divine up there (I believe there is one) has been through many phases. To start off, for eight years of my life I have been to church everyday of the nine months in a year that I spent at the greatest school up in the mountains. Nothing to do with devotion ofcourse, it was rule. The nuns. Ofcourse always sung in the choir, but in class 1o there was me and S who were the seniormost in school, so we sang the loudest of all in the whole choir, with or without the organ playing. It was us lighting up the little chapel.
Those days we grumbled and grumbled, failing to understand why we little kids had to go for half hour mass every morning, and fifteen minutes rosary in the evenings when the entire christian community worldover rarely went to church, if at all only on sundays. We were'nt nuns, so what if they were, and more importantly we were never going to be nuns.
There were days when we hid and hid after dinner, not wanting to go for rosary. The rosary prayer afterall consists of approximately 53 hail marys, 6 our fathers beside other prayers and that would take up the half hour playing time post dinner, while the very fortunate non christian world played and had the time of there lives, under the stars, out in the cold. Here I proudly claim that it is only those who went to that greatest school called Convent of Jesus & Mary in Mussoorie know what it is to play at night in the cold under the stars, because there is no place on earth from where the stars look as beautiful as from our hill and there is no other place where you would take off your warm clothes to play in the cold, sweat in the cold. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE WAVERLEY, THERE NEVER WILL BE.
Crazy but ya that's how we lived. Now as I look back, the chapel in school and things relating to the chapel are part of the most fun memories. All that hiding, all that forceful praying. The nuns claimed that we may have been too young for any kind of serious devotion but all they were trying to do was inculcate the habit. Four and a half years on, I can say they partially succeeded.
In all of this the best part was singing, the hymns are beautiful. If you make a bunch of us from school (non christians included) we could sing all evening. There are days when I sing these old hymns and I'm surprised at how much I remember.
Post school during the two years at home, the religious life was down in the dumps. My mother though a very pious and devoted christian never imposed her way of religion on me. Apart from christmas which I celebrate in huge style there was nothing more. Once in a while at night she'd ask if i prayed or not, she still does that. I still sang to myself sometimes, nothing to do with prayer. But I believed in God, I remember.
Then came law school. I have two friends who are christians, we go to church once in a while. Spirituality and me in law school, a very strange relationship. Law school in the beginning completely broke my heart, how could it not for somebody who came from waverley, expecting the same, expecting so much. Don't remember exact things that broke my heart, they say the human mind is better at remembering good things, my mind thankfully fully comes under that category. But I just remember that I was in some kind of pain. And you know what, I prayed, I strived. I knew I had to live. I really prayed. Believe it or not I read the bible every night, not to please God, but because I believed it was giving me wisdom of some kind. My roomate is proof of me reading every night. I prayed every night. Don't remember when I Stopped but I just stopped.
And ya life was good, not good by itself but I learnt to be happy. I think life in law school is war time, still is. You just have to keep fighting. Before that life was all bliss, joy came so easily. School was nine whole months of picnic with people dearest and the three months were spent being pampered at home. Ya so I always had it so easy. But this was war.
Even when I stopped praying I still went to church, all the way by bus, because in that church they sang all my favourite hymns, this particular one especially which they sang every sunday.
And so I don't really pray anymore, but I know on christmas I will pray for people dearest and ya I'll thank him, habit/faith/belief, I don't know.
But my mother really prays. And if you asked me I'd tell you that me is so happy, me is me, me is the dreamer, me is me all because of her and her prayers/wishes whatever you choose to call.