MAYA

I remember one particular visit to Tirupati.

For those who have never been there, seeing Lord Venkateswara is not simply a matter of walking into a temple.

You wait.

In the 1990s, I remember waiting close to twelve hours for darshan.

Twelve hours in a slow-moving queue, for a few seconds in front of the deity.

We used to go to Tirupati often, so this was not unusual for us.

On one such visit, after the darshan, we came back down to Tirupati and stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Maya.

There was a placard there explaining the name.

It said, in essence, that Maya is that which is not really there, and yet appears to be there.

Illusion.

I don’t remember the exact words anymore.

But I remember the thought.

It stayed with me.

Later, I came across another idea that somehow connected with it.

Our senses are extraordinary.

My eyes can see something miles away.

But they cannot see what is happening just behind them, inside my own body.

Blood can move through the aorta at more than a metre a second.

I don’t feel it.

My heart beats roughly a hundred thousand times a day.

I don’t hear most of them.

Put a stethoscope against the chest, and suddenly there it is.

The sound was there all along.

That fascinated me.

I began wondering how much of what I notice is simply determined by where my senses are pointing.

Mostly outward.

What I can see.

What I can hear.

What I can touch.

And yet none of those senses tells me why something bothers me.

Or what I am afraid of.

Or why I keep holding on to something.

For that, I have to stop and look in a different direction.

I find it interesting that this thought began for me in Tirupati.

I had spent close to twelve hours waiting to see God for a few seconds.

Then I walked into a restaurant called Maya.

Maybe that is why the word stayed with me.

I began wondering how much of my own life was spent responding to what was outside me.

What people thought.

What I wanted next.

What I had.

What I did not have.

And how much time I actually spent noticing what was happening within.

I still don’t know exactly what Maya means to me.

But the word has stayed.

Maybe Maya is not only about what is not there.

Maybe it is also about how easily we miss what is.