It is said in the Rig Veda, the oldest Hindu sacred text, that Truth is One but the Wise speak of it by many names.

For anyone who’s ever visited India, I’m sure you understand why that makes sense. India is characterized by micro climates, ethnicities, languages, cuisines, costumes & religions. It is a land of pluralism, of many dimensions, where people coexist in the past, present & future. Nowhere else in the world can one encounter a mosaic of Gods & Goddesses, traditionally archaic parents with modern educated children, villages unchanged since Independence, running without electricity, unpaved roads, mud houses yet incredulously juxtaposed with bustling metropolises, billionaires & Bollywood. In the Daawat of Indian history, minorities that fled persecution in their own lands, Zoroastrians, Jews, Tibetans, even Sikhs & Kashmiris, became a welcome addition to the flavorful Indian landscape.

Mumbai, the financial capital & richest city, is the crown jewel of multicultural society & religious tolerance in India. I was born into a Catholic family in Mumbai—my ancestors having surely been Hindu converts at some point in the last 200 years —In the summer of 1993. Well, summer in the West, but in the stormy monsoon season of India. Yes, for the unenlightened readers, Christians do exist, even in India, where they are a so-called “minority” of roughly 30 million. The Christian community in India are predominantly settled along the west coast regions of Goa, Kerala, Mangalore & Mumbai (although they are free to migrate anywhere internally) & are usually spread out into different sects – Catholics, Protestants, Malankara Syrian Orthodox, Baptists, Marthomites, Born Again Christians, Pentecostians so on & so forth. By virtue of birthplace, I was introduced to Persian & Jewish culture through the Fire Temples & Synagogues dotting Mumbai.

I was baptized at the Church of the Sacred Heart, in a former fishing village, in South Mumbai & like good Catholic girls, I studied at an all girls convent school (that is, a government aided school run by nuns belonging to different Catholic orders), attended Sunday school & received my First Holy Communion and confirmation. A well packaged Catholic. I’d been schooled about the Old & New Testament by the time I was 16 years old & had even ‘seen’ Jesus, in some of the Biblical DVDs that my father would collect. Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, Passion of the Christ, Oliver Twist—He wanted to broaden our horizons, but in doing so, he was also unwittingly exposing us to some cinematic antisemitism. Few catholic families in Mumbai, in the late 1990s and early 2000s were even remotely aware of antisemitism or of DVDs for that matter.

Naturally, during mass, some priests preached that our “Savior” was crucified by ancient Jews and that Easter was the ultimate fulfillment of Christmas prophecy. Yet the cognitive dissonance at Mass and in real life was a standard occurrence. We’d stand and listen to the priests singing the Passion every year on Good........

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