The odd thing about winter in the plains of northern India is it suddenly hits you. For weeks, it’s balmy and then you wake up one morning shivering. Overnight the temperature has plummeted. Well, that happened last week.
After unusually warm temperatures in the late 20s, the maximum on Thursday was just 15.2 degrees. The minimum was a freezing 4.6. If that wasn’t enough of a shock, the cold winds sweeping down from the Himalayas set your teeth chattering. Mine played a veritable symphony.
Now I’m used to winter in Europe but, on Thursday, I simply couldn’t get warm. I tried sitting on my hands but that didn’t help. My wretched derriere felt cold. In this self-pitying state, I chanced upon an earlier article in The Indian Express that lifted my spirits.
It claimed the Ram Lalla idols in Ayodhya are feeling the winter chill as much as I am. Now, if our Gods are shivering, who am I to complain?
This is how the article began: “With the mercury dropping in the state, priests and authorities in Ayodhya are taking care to ensure the comfort of the Ram Lalla idol, and the idols of the deity’s brothers, in a makeshift temple in the town. They have installed a blower heater in the temple, and covered the deities with a blanket.”
{{/usCountry}}This is how the article began: “With the mercury dropping in the state, priests and authorities in Ayodhya are taking care to ensure the comfort of the Ram Lalla idol, and the idols of the deity’s brothers, in a makeshift temple in the town. They have installed a blower heater in the temple, and covered the deities with a blanket.”
{{/usCountry}}Frankly, with my feet frozen and my fingers icy, I felt like moving into the temple myself.
But I had no option except to shiver in an unheated office, with cold bare floors and bone-chilling drafts blowing in from leaky windows.
The arrangements for Ram Lalla filled me with envy. Mahant Satyendra Das, the temple’s chief priest, revealed the heart-warming details. “We have installed a blower heater in the makeshift temple to ensure that the temperature is under control and our deities do not suffer in this cold.
Along with that, the deities have been given warm clothes and have been covered in a blanket. Earlier we thought of making a fireplace too but as the makeshift temple is made of wood and glass, it will not be safe. The arrangements made will continue till the winter is here and meanwhile, we will keep thinking of any other way we can ensure more comfort to the deities.”
The truth is our Gods have a much better time than us. The Mahant says the Ram Lalla temple has “an air-conditioner to keep the deities comfortable in summer”. So neither the cold nor the heat worries them.
And they’re not the only ones. All the Gods in Ayodhya are similarly taken care of. “Similar arrangements for both the seasons exist in almost every major place of worship in the temple town”, the Mahant adds.
If office cupboards had blankets, I would have wrapped myself in one. If there was a blower heater around, I would be sitting on top of it.
But the luxuries that are commonplace for our Gods were a distant dream on Thursday. So I reflected on the human predicament instead. If Adam, under the apple tree, felt cold, God did not give him blankets or a heater. Eve was poor compensation!
In fact, our Gods are luckier than most. In December, churches in London are forbidding because they’re horribly cold. Central heating is denied to their Gods. And I’ve never met a priest who’s covered the shoulders of a Jesus statue with a stole, even though it’s snowing outside and the wind is howling all the way from Siberia.
When Roman emperors died — actually, they were more likely to be murdered — they were elevated to the Gods. Consequently, there are quite a few looking down on us.
But on Thursday, as I shivered in an unheated office, I decided if I’m to join them, I insist on clinging to my Hindu faith.
I want an assurance of a blanket and a heater, not the indifference of a British priest who refuses to accept Jesus’s statue can feel the winter chill.