Thursday, March 6, 2008

Winnipeg Hindus

As his wife, it is my prerogative to criticize everything that Melvin does, including what he does for a living (i.e., writing). I take my role seriously. Even the lightest, breeziest, funniest humor he writes gets subjected to my evil scrutiny. The sole purpose of such activity is to find something, anything to make him scratch that bald spot on his head -- even if only for a moment. If you can't have fun at your spouse's expense, what is the point of long-term commitment?

So when he announced he had an 800-word assignment on Hinduism for the Winnipeg Free Press, I doubted his sanity. Melvin on theology? Turns out I learned a thing or two from his article on Hinduism. In the process of his writing, we, as a family, made our first (and second) visit to the local temple.

An article on Sikhism followed, which prompted this response from a member of the local Sikh community (scroll down to the letter from Harpal Singh Dhanjal). It reminded me that it is so easy to get caught up in the external aspects in almost every walk of life.

1 comment:

kallu said...

Nice article, Malathi. Actually both yours- very tongue in cheek supportive of Melvin and his - On Hinduism which was briefly descriptive and it kind of showed his respect for the religion and in a rare case, went beyond the rituals .

On Sikhism, Im sure the problems he describes exercises the minds of youthful Sikhs more than service. Service is a binding factor and you can find yourself there if you can't find yourself in God. Its a little ancillary to the religion, not the main thing.So Melvin was right to focus on the external signs which draw more attention. Muslims also have a tradition of giving, but we don't focus on that do we?