Origin Story

A few days ago, I joined a group of individuals in a beautiful chapel for a cohesive inter-faith forum for each of us to narrate our “Origin Story.”

For those who may be unfamiliar, the dictionary defines Origin Story as “… a backstory, or established background narrative, that informs the identity and motivations of heroes and villains …”  We had assembled to inform our faith and reflect on how it guides our plans and choices.

Origin Stories – HIS-stories and HER-stories make our history. 

But, as celebrated author Hillary Mantel observed, “… history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organizing our ignorance of the past. …. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, a script is a performance, or a map is a journey.  It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them.” 

Thus, I am not the sole author of my Origin Story.  It is co-scripted by my parents, their parents, family and friends.  Each person’s personal experiences, biases and narrative styles have shaped – and, dare I say, tainted – my Origin Story.  And now, fast paced lifestyles and short attention spans serve to further diminish my Origin Story to an “elevator pitch”, formatted to suit both occasion and the audience.

I was born into a Hindu family.  My parents became refugees in their own country when India was partitioned in 1947; yet, I cannot recall them ever expressing hatred for those left behind on the “other” side.  My paternal grandmother was widowed in 1955 and lived with us until she died in 1976, just over 100 years old.  For the last three decades of her life, my grandmother expressly told us to eschew all religious rituals and free ourselves of dogmatic beliefs.  I was therefore fortunate to be provided a white board for scripting my own faith narrative.

I immigrated to Canada with my family in 1996.  In spite of an impeccable track record, I was deemed unfit for Canadian banking and stayed unemployed for almost a year.  Perhaps, my ego prevented me from accepting a job outside my comfort zone, even as finances became precarious. 

Looking back, I firmly believe this period helped shape who I would become.  While reaching out to expand my network searching for a job, something drew me inwards, to introspect.   Volunteering activities that focused on the needs of others – the infirm, aged, lonely, suicidal or those in hospice care – served to remind me how blessed I was.

I would go for solitary walks and on a neighborhood trail discovered a large boulder on top of a hill, overlooking Lake Ontario.  Over the past 27 years, this has remained my “rock”, my sanctum sanctorum.  I have often sat there wondering – where lies the origin of the wind swirling around me?  Is it omnipotent and omnipresent, existing all over simultaneously?  When, where and how does it change its temperament – switching from a hot and dusty Simoom to the cooler Shamal across the Middle Eastern deserts?  Eagerly awaited as the “purvaiya” (East Wind) that showers parched Indo-Gangetic lands with life-providing water?  One minute it is getting polluted, howling through litter-filled, smelly garbage-strewn streets of New York or Mumbai and the next instant, it soars over snow-clad mountain tops, cleansing itself.  Somewhere it blows across a reservation as a viciously icy wind; elsewhere, gentle as Zephyr it caresses and comforts a child lying on a blanket – whether in Tel Aviv or in Gaza. 

Does wind age, I wonder, as it adapts and changes its nature while transforming lands it passes over?   It just exists.  Only, we use names like Trade Wind, North-Westerly, Easterly, Sea Breeze etc., to suit our purpose.  Just like we create labels to define our personas and feel compelled to live up to the assigned nomenclature – a father, grandpa, husband, friend, rival, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist etc. 

Instead, can we not be fluid and all-encompassing like the air that sustains each of us without distinction?  Is just being accepting, empathetic and caring not enough? 

Why have faith in anything that divides?