I was nine when my father left his body.
His prayer shawl still hung behind the door, the scent of sandalwood still tucked into its folds. I am Rajani, born in a small town beside the Kaveri River, daughter of a man who seemed to hold the morning sun in his chest. He was the village pujari — the temple priest — and to me, he was the clearest bridge between the Divine and the dust of this world.
But after he passed, people moved on faster than I thought possible. The way the temple bell kept ringing each morning without him felt like betrayal. I began to believe the sacred itself had moved on too.
For years, I went through the motions of prayer but didn’t feel anything move within. I stopped singing the bhajans — devotional songs — he loved. I stopped lighting a lamp in the evenings. My mother never forced me. She just kept placing oil in the small brass diya by the window, waiting for the day I would light it again.
That day didn’t come until years later, on the banks of the same Kaveri.
I was visiting home during the monsoon. The river had risen high. Children were tossing marigold petals into the current, their laughter mixing with the temple bells. I stood alone under the peepal tree where my father once taught me verses from the Bhagavad Gita.
Suddenly, one returned to me: "I am the memory in living beings, and I am the knowledge of the wise" (Bhagavad Gita 15.15).
For the first time in years, I felt him — not as a lost parent, but as a presence, gentle, persistent. Not in body, but in memory held sacred.
I sat by the water and closed my eyes. The Gita's words echoed softly again. "In Me all things are strung like pearls on a thread" (Bhagavad Gita 7.7).
What if I hadn’t been forgotten? What if I had just closed my ears to the sacred’s quiet singing?
That evening, I lit the lamp in my mother’s home for the first time since childhood. Its flame wavered, then steadied. As I watched it dance, I remembered something from the Taittiriya Upanishad: “He who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, never turns away.”
The sacred had not turned away.
One of the boys from the river, maybe seven or eight, passed by our house. He paused, smiled at the lamp, and touched his forehead in pranam — a respectful bow. Then he ran off into the twilight.
I cried then, quietly. Not because I was sad, but because I knew I had been held all along — through the silence, through the forgetting.
As Krishna says in the Gita: “I am seated in the hearts of all beings” (Bhagavad Gita 10.20).
And in remembering, I was remembered.
I was nine when my father left his body.
His prayer shawl still hung behind the door, the scent of sandalwood still tucked into its folds. I am Rajani, born in a small town beside the Kaveri River, daughter of a man who seemed to hold the morning sun in his chest. He was the village pujari — the temple priest — and to me, he was the clearest bridge between the Divine and the dust of this world.
But after he passed, people moved on faster than I thought possible. The way the temple bell kept ringing each morning without him felt like betrayal. I began to believe the sacred itself had moved on too.
For years, I went through the motions of prayer but didn’t feel anything move within. I stopped singing the bhajans — devotional songs — he loved. I stopped lighting a lamp in the evenings. My mother never forced me. She just kept placing oil in the small brass diya by the window, waiting for the day I would light it again.
That day didn’t come until years later, on the banks of the same Kaveri.
I was visiting home during the monsoon. The river had risen high. Children were tossing marigold petals into the current, their laughter mixing with the temple bells. I stood alone under the peepal tree where my father once taught me verses from the Bhagavad Gita.
Suddenly, one returned to me: "I am the memory in living beings, and I am the knowledge of the wise" (Bhagavad Gita 15.15).
For the first time in years, I felt him — not as a lost parent, but as a presence, gentle, persistent. Not in body, but in memory held sacred.
I sat by the water and closed my eyes. The Gita's words echoed softly again. "In Me all things are strung like pearls on a thread" (Bhagavad Gita 7.7).
What if I hadn’t been forgotten? What if I had just closed my ears to the sacred’s quiet singing?
That evening, I lit the lamp in my mother’s home for the first time since childhood. Its flame wavered, then steadied. As I watched it dance, I remembered something from the Taittiriya Upanishad: “He who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, never turns away.”
The sacred had not turned away.
One of the boys from the river, maybe seven or eight, passed by our house. He paused, smiled at the lamp, and touched his forehead in pranam — a respectful bow. Then he ran off into the twilight.
I cried then, quietly. Not because I was sad, but because I knew I had been held all along — through the silence, through the forgetting.
As Krishna says in the Gita: “I am seated in the hearts of all beings” (Bhagavad Gita 10.20).
And in remembering, I was remembered.
