Were there signs in the universe? And if so, when did they occur — and why? I had grown up surrounded by parents who believed in the invisible hand of someone guiding us but I had dropped that notion somewhere along powered by the invincibility of my teenage years. But more recently, in adult life, the notion of signs had crept into many of my conversations with my friends: I knew it was a sign that I should quit my job. I knew that it was a sign that something was wrong. How was anybody supposed to know when something was a sign and when it was just a coincidence? Or maybe “signs” were merely a way of vesting coincidences with meaning.
I had never visualized God as a micromanager. I didn’t think he was up there sending secret signals to me and the nearly six billion other people who inhabit the planet. As far as I knew, he had never gotten me a free meal. And so, to the degree that I gave credence to signs at all, I didn’t think they were coming from God — at least not in that man-with-the-white-beard-in-the-sky kind of way. So then, what were these signs — if indeed, they existed?
So as I continued to mull over these ideas, I was also thinking about the state of my finances. College was ending in a month and the engineer’s degree did not look like it would bring any fortunes my way. With money running out, I was a lack of ideas when Sandeep, my friend walked into the room
“Why are you so gloomy today Bawa?”, he asked in his usual laissez-faire tone.
As we discussed the lack of money, he comes up with a variety of options including my joining him in his dairy business up in a remote village up north. The idea of milking udders is worse than Japanese hari-kari and is shot down quickly.
“Ah well then, you can join your father and become a priest maybe”
It was a nice, even inspired idea, but when it came to actually doing it…well, it probably wasn’t going to happen. Although I was eligible I had never learned any of the rituals, but I knew that working part-time as a priest during the 10 days preceding the Parsi New Year paid well.
“We are going to Pune tomorrow to Budhwar Peth for some action. You are welcome to hitch a ride”.
It’s settled that I would go with them, but then head my own way to look for the Parsi temple there that needed a part-time priest for the 10-day prayers coming up in August.
“Do you know where the Parsi temple is?” I ask almost fifteen auto drivers before one finally nods tentatively. It’s good enough for me. I am driven for 30 minutes before he drops me at Camp road — one of the busiest roads in western Pune city, right outside the temple. It’s a rare thing in India — An auto driver taking you to your known destination.
As I am about to pay him, an old Parsi lady shows up from the left corner.
“Can you drop me at the Komra Parsi Fire temple deekra (son)?” she says.
Before I say anything she is already sitting next to me instructing the auto driver down another lane.
“Take a left. Take a left”. She is smacking his shoulder from behind urging him to drive based on her instructions. Five minutes later she has disembarked leaving me in front of another temple — minutes away from each other.
I mutter a silent curse as I pay the auto driver. Heading back to the other temple seems like a chore. I might as well try my luck here, I figure.
“I am looking for the head priest”, I say as she opens the door. She is around my age, fair — almost too fair, and has Persian features with a husky voice.
“He is my dad. Come I will take you to him”, she says with confidence that shows she knows how to deal with the opposite gender.
And so it is. I am invited to join the 8 other Priests, most of them around my age, to pray, starting next month.
“We look forward to seeing you here soon”, her dad, a charismatic man in his fifties shakes my hand as she stands looking just behind me.
I walk the 4 miles back to the bus station and head back to Bombay, tentatively employed — for the first time in my life.
“Hell No! You are not going to pray for the 10 days. You have no training and we don’t want the tainted money earned by you” — It’s my parents who are hell-bent on keeping me from going back to Pune. They think I have no idea of the customs or prayers and would just generate bad karma taking money from patrons who want their dead relatives to be well tended to. I resign myself to staying unemployed and penniless for the foreseeable future.
A phone call comes in a day before I have to be there. I hand it to my father who takes the call to politely refuse the head priest. Instead, he ends the call saying that I would be there tomorrow evening. I am slightly confused.
“Our cousin Kersi’s son Hormaz is there too. He will guide him”, he later tells my mother.
We have just put in a couple of hundred roses in the vases for the prayers tomorrow, followed by setting up the oil lamps and then cleaning the whole temple. Most of the others have gone to sleep, but I am not ready just yet. As I sit on the stairs outside the temple late at night, she wipes her hands on her sides and comes over.
“They say you are a black belt? Can you teach me sometime?” I laugh as I tell her how martial arts is slightly easier than dancing, but equally useless when it comes to the real world. We sit and talk late into the night.
“How can I impress this girl?” he asks equally frustrated with his failed attempts at catching her attention. I am sitting with a priest who wants to have something more than friendship with the head priest’s daughter. I am paying half the attention.
“Try not to interact with her for the next five days. It will work itself out”, I say looking up at him.
“You should meet Anahita. She is Arnavaz’s best friend. You two will really get along”.
There is sarcasm in his voice laced with lashing out. Knowing he is venting I see no reason to aggravate him further. The name enters my consciousness like a simple, pure strain of music. Anahita — Wonder who she is? I file away the name in my memory and laugh.
A year later around the same time, I get a call from the temple priest asking if I would be coming this year for prayers to Pune. I already have a job now and can’t take ten days off from it to go there even though the money is much better.
“I am sorry, but won’t be able to make it this year”. I make it an end of discussion rather than a negotiation.
Two weeks after the phone call, I am calling the same number back. The job ended yesterday and fifteen of us have been let go. It was definitely not expected.
“Do you still want me to come this year?” I ask, my voice slightly lower with trepidation. I am not expecting a positive outcome.
“We are always in need of priests here. You are welcome”, the head priest says without a hint of anger that I had anticipated.
“See you next month then”
We are back to arranging flowers in the prayer hall tonight. It’s a busy night and there are nine of us with roses in our hands, each taking up one row and trying to remember to put five in each vase — each of different colors.
The head priest’s daughter is the only girl amongst us boys, but today is different. I see a girl in the corner her back towards me. She is wearing a brown Indian dress, her head covered in a blue scarf as is the custom in the Parsi temple.
Curious to see who she is, I slowly inch my way towards her as I talk to the others around me.
“Have you met this lady on the floor just yet?. She comes to visit us only one day every year” It’s Hormaz, my cousin from the other side as he sees me watching this girl.
She looks up at him and then follows his glance in my direction. A smile bursts upon her face. It not just covers her entire face, but lights up her eyes — and mine, without my being entirely sure why.
“Hi, I am Anahita,” she says.
Take the bus ride to Pune. Pick the right auto driver. Turn left. Have the old lady forcibly take you to the other fire temple instead of the one you landed at. Have the priest there be a family acquaintance. Meet his daughter. Lose a job. Come back another year. Be there on the same day and at the same time.
What I did know is that this was a huge, blinking neon sign I couldn’t ignore or dismiss. All these seemingly disconnected bits, they formed a pattern, invisible to see.
Do this, a gentle voice seemed to be saying. Now, this. And now that. All of which had led me here — Standing next to this girl I know by the name Ana: my wife, my friend, my guide, my eternal love, and pretty much the architect of the person I would become, for the years to come.
