The Joy of Alignment

Today's guest blogger is Divya Srinath, a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in Neuroscience and French. She is also an IFYC Fellow and an active member of Atma, the Washington University Hindu Student Association.

My grandfather is a mathematical genius. Give him any calculation, big or small, and he'll give you an answer in less than 30 seconds. Sometimes I think that numbers are just running through his head, and all he has to do is just piece them together to get an answer.

My grandfather is also an incredible storyteller. He can tell you the date of a chemistry test he took in second grade, who got the highest score on that test, and who failed the test. He can describe, in vivid detail, every single one of his elementary school teachers, and he remembers hundreds of quirky remarks and phrases that they used in class. He can also tell you how he first met his friend P.N.S Mani, with whom he remained friends from grades 1-12 and with whom he continues to email and speak regularly, nearly sixty five years later. When my grandparents were living with my family in the United States, we regularly received messages on our answering machine for my grandfather from friends he had not seen in decades.

When I was in eighth grade, my grandfather told me about his Muslim friend who lived behind his childhood house. He told about the games they used to play together, and how one day, his friend's whole family was gone. He told me about the houses that were burned down, and about the buildings that he used to see on the streets that were no longer there. He told me about how he felt when he first heard the news that Gandhi had died. He told me how he and all his friends gathered around the radio at Banaras University, shocked and tormented. A man whom he admired and loved deeply was gone.

He told me about Jawaharlal Nehru, but also about Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He told me about how all his friends used to eat rasgulla together, but he also taught me how to read a history textbook so I saw what many people didn't see at the time - individuals are not just a microcosmic representation of their religious, social, and economic identity. He taught me to see the way in which human interactions pieced together the world's events.

My grandfather has this impossible-to-believe ability to find humor and positivity in any situation. He's always been quite good in geography, but he never saw the lines of separation. I know he saw a lot of horrible things, a great deal of death and devastation on both sides, but he has never talked about that. My grandmother tells me that his best friends were always Muslims and Christians.

I think my grandfather likes the precision of dates, of mathematics, the joy of finding the perfect alignment for the events that have mapped out his life. He has this way of putting people together so that they all fit together in his mind, all heads and feet in the frame, everyone in panorama. He doesn't see their ambiguities, the uncertainties, the intangibles, or the impossible. The again, he has always been pretty good at solving division problems.

The content of this blog reflects the views of its author and does not necessarily reflect the views of either Eboo Patel or the Interfaith Youth Core.

By Eboo Patel  |  November 6, 2008; 11:44 AM ET  | Category:  Interfaith Issues , Morality , Personal Religion , Religion & Politics , Religious Conflict , The Faith Divide
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