A temple :
is a place for introspection; not for introducing your speculations on to others!
It was a quite Thursday morning. A day for Shirdi Baba — whom my mother is devout follower of. It was the first time for my son and I to visit this temple, so we followed my mother and performed the rituals placed ahead of us, like clockwork.
Get Skyla’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After sitting in the middle of a small crowd of women, an elderly lady strikes up a conversation with my mother, while a stray cat is entertained by a rolling lime on the floor, which my son found equally entertaining, but refrained from joining in (thank God, because all that was running through my head was the horror of bacteria and viruses that this innocent cat would be carrying with it, and generously pass it on to humans sitting around in it’s vicinity.)
As my son was quietly watching, it must have struck this stranger elderly lady as odd — because seeing a child quietly observing something seems to be the most absurd thing in the world to her — and she has the audacity to ask me whether I forgot to feed him his food this morning, before bringing him into the temple. She may have good intentions although I refuse to see it, because I am quite capable of caring for my own offspring with an already tinted shade of medical background that more often than not, influences my decisions.
I don’t know why her questioning bothered me to this extent, but I kept my answers short and nonchalant. Does this idiotic approach to inquiring about a child’s food consumption still have to take place? I sure hope they are the last generations of self-imposing, irritatingly questioning people we have to deal with because we already have a shortage of mental space what with everything having to be juggled — NOT just as mothers, but contributors to society, earning a decent salary, managing the house and tolerating already dysfunctional adults within our own generation.
This is a rant. And also, a plea for strangers to mind their own thoughts before it comes out of questions through loose tongues. It’s not serving a good purpose — especially in a place where people are supposed to come for worship, reflection, and setting intentions. For me, a temple is a place for introspection; not for introducing your speculations on others!
Funnily, I have now managed to peacefully do that here on a Medium article, thank you very much, digital space!
