Going on Faith

The morning I arrived in Trivandrum, the capital of the south Indian state of Kerala, I met my friend Vinita, a Hindu, who promised to accompany me on a visit to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, a place that is generally off limits to nonbelievers. Though my family is from Kerala, we are Christians, a community dating back to A.D. 52 with the arrival of St. Thomas on these shores. “Doubting” Thomas converted Brahmins to the faith, who are now the so-called Syrian or St. Thomas Christians. And that morning, one of their fold was proposing to enter a Hindu temple.

I had always wanted to see this legendary Lord Vishnu temple, and not just because it had been very much in the news. One of the six vaults under the temple, dedicated in 1750 by the Maharaja of Travancore, was opened recently by court order and found to contain gold and jewelry worth a staggering $22 billion.

The treasures were probably offerings to the deity from the maharaja and his descendants, and there is much debate about what to do with this fortune and who can be trusted to do the counting.

Vinita had brought along a cream-colored mundu for me, and I wrapped it around my waist. Barefoot and bare-chested, I approached the towering seven-tiered entrance and suddenly I realized I was wearing a gold necklace with both a cross and a St. Christopher medallion on it. I quickly removed it and kept it concealed in my hand.

The temple is stunning, with a long passage flanked by 365 granite columns and many elaborate wooden carvings. The deity housed at the center is the massive 18-foot long Vishnu, who is reclining on the serpent Ananda. One can only view the deity in sections, at very specific times, and I was fortunate enough to be in a throng allowed to peek through one door when it was opened for a few minutes. I saw the hand and thigh of Vishnu. The sight gave me goose bumps. It was not just the glimpse into this sanctum sanctorum, or the passion of my fellow worshipers that moved me, but something immediate, something I had experienced in other temples: the sense that the deity actually resides there, resting in its gilded lair, hidden by doors through which mortals occasionally get a glimpse. This was no celestial God whom one invoked while sending up incense and prayers; this God was right there, and we were in the divine presence at the heart of the heart of the faith. As I stood barefoot and bare-chested on stone weathered by the feet of millions of believers, shoulder to shoulder with people who looked like me, I felt this faith too was also my heritage, and I was no interloper, no pretender here. After all, before St. Thomas, my Brahmin forefathers had worshiped Vishnu, among other gods. Some remnant of my ancestral genes resonated in harmony with the spirit flowing through this edifice. 

Read at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/t-magazine/travel/going-on-faith-in-kerala.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1337520755-btS2NLfu1L/h rRBuiMdNA