The Second Coming

At the stroke of midnight, hundreds of Mumbai youngsters wake up to God. And walk up to Him. Just as Monday turns to Tuesday, they make their weekly barefoot journey to Lord Ganesha’s abode at the city’s Siddhi Vinayak temple. An unusual pilgrimage that sees crowds of young professionals, businessmen and students march miles for a dawn darshan. And it’s no solemn, silent excursion this, it’s more like a nocturnal party celebrating freshly-discovered fervour and faith. "We sing, laugh and have lots of fun," says 28-year-old Mukesh Upadhyaya, who walks upwards of 20 km from his Andheri home to keep his date with the elephant god every Tuesday. "There is nothing grim or serious about it. It’s like trekking to meet a good friend who’ll never let you down."

Such youthful enthusiasm-and such increasingly huge crowds-are new to the temple, admits Vishaka Raut, who heads the Siddhi Vinayak Trust. "Of late, over 2,50,000 people visit the temple on a Tuesday, Ganesha’s day; and these are only those who enter the temple. Many worship standing outside. On Ganesh Chaturthis, 14 to 16 lakh people visit. And our website, where you can do the authentic Siddhi Vinayak Ganesha’s darshan, has already got about 1 crore hits."

God has made a huge comeback. To young, yuppie, urban India. Where both Traditional Religion and New Age Spirituality are booming. Where it’s no longer unfashionable to say one is religious. Pampering the soul spiritually, reconnecting with the inner self through meditation, even being downright religiously ritualistic, in fact, have become acceptable and sometimes even trendy in India’s metros. Because today’s stressed-out, insecure, urban generation has taken to seeking solace and stability in the faith that God, or a Greater Power, exists and is on its side. Add on the ideological vacuum of these times, unlike when Gandhism and Marxism fired imaginations and constituted Belief and it’s understandable why young Indians are groping for a new Belief-turning to religion and spirituality to be the new sheet anchors for existence.

They are looking for succour within traditional faith and in secular spiritual practices. Like those who form five-kilometre queues on full-moon nights outside Gurudwara Nadha Sahib, on the banks of Ghaggar river, near Chandigarh. Unlike earlier, over half of them are between age 16 and 40. In communist bastion West Bengal, the popularity of an old saint, Baba Lokenath, is on a phenomenal rise with his followers having unleashed a promotional blitzkrieg. Thus, there are hoardings, posters and other Lokenath merchandise.

Significantly, the religion that has so been revived is therefore very need-based, rather personal. It caters to one’s craving for security, peace and even belief. It’s a religion that needs no messiahs but gurus, the eternal shrinks, with a promise to comfort. Because it is faith that isn’t designed so much to uplift, enlighten or act as a salve but more a means to enhance the quality of life in a society driven by materialistic impulses. Little wonder then that there’s no escaping the Spiritual Supermarket today. Pick up any daily and it’ll have a religious column, interview or feature. Turn on the TV and find some telegenic guru delivering a motivational speech on the local cable. Enter a music shop to find shelves of spiritual fare, packaged for the upmarket elite by big music houses. Browse through bookshops and discover that most have a corner dedicated to God and matters godly brimming with literature on the Maker, healing spirituality and holistic lifestyles. Meditation marts, spiritual guides for a fee, mind-healing workshops, there’s plenty to choose from in the shops that sell Instant Nirvana.

"A new feel-good spirituality is booming in our affluent urban society. A celebratory, almost carnivalesque religiosity. And it’s very different from spirituality as we have known it," says Prof Makarand Paranjape of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, who has researched India’s spiritual traditions extensively. The new spirituality, in fact, is just as much about material well-being as it is about spiritual health. It promises to endow its followers with inner peace, satisfaction, harmonious relationships in the private and public spheres and good health. The stress is on improving the quality of life: "Forget taking sanyas, one does not even have to ‘opt out’ to practice such piety. It’s very much a spirituality that helps achieve mainstream aspirations," says Paranjape.

Or as Praveen Chopra, editor of Life Positive, a personal growth magazine, puts it: "The spirituality that urban Indian is getting so hooked on to today can happen only post-prosperity; the worry for money over, the quest for a holistic, happier life is on." A recent train journey from Pathankot to Delhi, relates Chopra, illustrated the lack of conflict between the material and the spiritual in the minds of today’s devotee. A co-passenger who finished chanting the Sukhmani Sahib out loud as a part of his daily routine, switched to reading Business World almost immediately. Piety and profit needn’t clash anymore.

Quite apt then that Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Ambani and Amar Singh should make a pilgrimage to Badrinath to seek divine blessings for the success of a programme significantly titled Kaun Banega Crorepati. Religion doesn’t have to be about material denial any more. In fact, Prof Mohammed Abdul Kalam, who teaches social anthropology at the Chennai University, goes as far as to say that the idea seems to be to practice religion that’s as visible as possible. "Liberalisation has brought in a lot of money and show of wealth has to happen through elaborate, publicised rituals." It doesn’t jar then when Balasubramaniam, joint executive officer in charge of the Tirupati Balaji temple in Andhra Pradesh, flaunts the temple’s annual earnings last year: "A staggering Rs 400 crore! No Hindu temple in India or anywhere in Asia can boast of such huge revenue collections. And the number of devotees have multiplied manifold."

A yearly pilgrim to Jammu’s Vaishno Devi temple, this time Delhi-based exporter Paramjit Singh had to wait 18 hours in line before he could reach the cave goddess. "It wouldn’t take me more than three hours earlier. The crowds are swelling. Also, the kind of devotees are so different now. A lot more younger people seem to be coming," the thirty-something devotee says.

Even Param would be surprised at the religious ardency bred in today’s youth if he met 26-year-old Aradhana Madan. Hospitality manager at Delhi’s Le Meridien hotel, the young girl "married" Lord Krishna three years ago. She has invitation cards, wedding photos for proof. "He’d always been my pin-up man since childhood," she says, "Now he’s my husband." And yes, she has felt like she’s spent nights of love with her ‘husband’.

Indeed, the devotee profile is changing and it puzzles Pundit Lambodar Panda. He’s amazed at young city kids thronging the Baidyanath Temple in Bihar’s Deogarh district in the ongoing month-long Shravani Mela. Elderly locals would visit earlier, "but last year about 50 lakh Shiv bhakts came here and surprisingly, about 80 per cent of them were young!" Even this year, the endless serpentine queues of devotees leading to the Baidyanath Temple are dotted with jeans-clad youth who have travelled great distances. An economics graduate from Jamshedpur, Sanjay Gandhi, 25, believes his prayers here will help him become a model. A student from the Patna Science College, Subhashish Chandra, also in his early twenties, stands in the same line to pray he does well in his exams. Says he: "I do puja every morning, fast on certain days dedicated to Lord Hanuman and believe concentrating on God keeps me away from the evil thoughts that otherwise grip my mind."

Dr Mohan Isaac, head of the department of psychiatry at Bangalore’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences correlates growing levels of stress and insecurity with the increasing rush at places of worship. Says he, "Steep rises in income throws open many new choices, dilemmas and possibilities that things could take a turn for the worse. Turning to God takes care of these insecurities. Falling back on faith for stability is the easiest way out in these fast-changing times."

Much like Chennai-based journalist Rajyashri Chandrashekhar feels about her teenage children who are much more pious than she was at their age: "It’s the fear of competition, failure, the fact that they’ve many more problems than I ever did that makes them turn to God." Aarti Rao, 28, also took to religion for comfort when she worked in the US for a year: "I turned to my religion to overcome the cultural shock. Religion and rituals brought me solace." She has since become a member of a unique study circle, The Dwaita List, whose 400 adherents use the Internet as a forum to discuss aspects of Hindu philosophy. Now back in Bangalore and working at Deutsche Software (India), she carries Lord Vishnu’s picture and a book of shlokas with her to office and on tours: "They make me feel at home. We software professionals lead a stressful life. Ten minutes in the puja room helps cope with the tensions."

Dedicated puja spaces are becoming part of an increasing number of young homes. And not because there was a tradition of puja rooms in the homes they grew up in. Graphic designer Gautam Ramchandani, 31, for instance, made a little prayer corner when he shifted into his new home at Delhi’s Sarvodaya Enclave after marriage. He’s even charted his own peculiar religious routine; mornings have him doing aarti, smearing vibhuti on his forehead and drinking the water he had offered God the day before. Says Gautam: "There are just so many decisions to take in life everyday that you just have to rely on a Superpower to guide you into making the right one." And a quaint mix of Hindu idols, scripts by pirs and fakirs, pictures of Sufi saints and Buddhist relics find place in the youngster’s nook of worship.

Because faith today is so personal an issue it can afford to be, like Gautam’s puja corner, much less conformist, much more cosmopolitan. Sitting in the heart of a rigid Catholic enclave in Mumbai’s Bandra, Glenn Fernandes teaches spiritual music that is jarringly secular. "Music has no religion, it ‘connects’ you to a Greater Power and elevates you. When a person comes to me to learn music, sometimes I feel it is in his spiritual destiny to crave for music. I find the number of cravers increasing today," he philosophises. Glenn also teaches a spiritual dance at the end of which, he says, people feel "madly happy". Different certainly in scale, not ambition perhaps, from the speech that Vipassana guru S. . Goenka delivered before world leaders at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, this year. He spoke on "True Happiness".

Interestingly, between the small-time Glenn and big-time Goenka, there are a huge lot of gurus, preachers and teachers-a mix of good, bad and ugly-with promises to deliver ecstasy and salvation. Each with his or her own way to get you there. It could be through reiki, pranic healing, Siddha healing, past life therapy, rudraksha therapy, the Silva method, Melchizedek method, transcendental meditation... The teacher could be like Anand Tendolkar, conducting personal growth workshops-"The Journey Within"-at Mumbai’s Napean Sea Road. Or Saranya Zaveri and Asha Madhavan, giving lectures in Chennai and Delhi on Money Magic, a holistic way to create wealth.

Twenty-something ‘Himalayan Master’ Rahul Thakur teaches "Watchful Awareness" in well-attended workshops. He wears ordinary clothes, sports a cellphone and lives in Delhi’s posh Defence Colony. Intellectuals, authors, and artistes pay a handsome fee to attend his workshops, the advertising copy for which says "in each of us resides a completely free human being for whom every moment can be joyous" and promises to teach meditation techniques to "enable you to discover your true self". Thakur feels that with bellies full and intellectual freedom possible, the Indian city-slicker is looking to reach the next stage. Some sort of grace, some answers beyond the intellect. Most who come to him, says Thakur, have been to other gurus. "Thanks to the boom in spirituality, there are so many gurus to visit out there."

And yet there are those who are only too happy to have taken spiritual lessons from the sundry gurus they’ve met. Like 33-year-old Sharmila, married into the Dalmiya industrialist family, felt blessed after learning reiki and meditation about a year-and-a-half ago. "I’d grown up in a religious family-more ritualistic than spiritual-but the connection I feel with the Higher Being now is marvellous. People tell me I’ve become nicer, kinder. For the first time, I am happy to be alone." Many of her friends, Sharmila says, have also taken to meditating, reiki and pranic healing. Some of them are, in fact, planning to get together and set up a Pranic Healing Centre at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre: "People have partied a lot, had a lot of fun. They now need something deeper to sustain themselves, to make them happy."

Just how Moses Deepak Singh felt when he quit a job with a Fortune 500 firm in New York to return to India and preach for the International Church of Christ. With a civil engineering degree from IIT, a master’s from New Jersey and five years in the US, Moses still felt life wanting. There was a need for a "purpose" to live, a desire to "make an impact on other lives". About the same time he met Mamta, a research scientist working in North Carolina, who’d also decided to give it all up to become a preacher in India. They are married now, live in Delhi, travel extensively to preach and are content. Says Mamta: "Earlier, happiness and sadness both just sent me into shopping frenzy. Today I lead a much more eternal, much less temporary life." For Deepak, the spiritual rewards more than make up for the mainstream ambitions he has foregone: "I feel I am growing in compassion, humility, love, kindness. I am growing in joy."

Finally then, however much it seems like an entire generation is on the spiritual fast track to attain Instant Nirvana, being with God does seem to have some positive rub-offs. And even as many in our cities hum along with compact discs full of music that promise enlightenment or stand in endless queues leading to crowded temples, gurus like Pandurang Shastri Athavale with his Swadhyaya movement is changing rural India. Using the Bhagvad Gita as a tool for social transformation, Swadhyaya followers are forging their way into fishing and agricultural communities to preach universal oneness. Thousands of villagers in Gujarat and Maharashtra are living in amity. They now jointly buy and work in common plots, or boats. And the produce is then distributed to those in need...

...God certainly must be back!