I perfectly remember those days of my childhood, when I used to live in a place where one could hear the Azaan (I didn’t know what it’s called…I googled this while writing) from the loudspeakers of a nearby mosque every Friday. Every time I heard that, the more curious I got, wondering about the lyrics of that unintelligible song.

I could not ask anyone around me since I assumed they wouldn’t know the lyrics in Urdu either (I’m from a Hindu family and so are my friends). I think they would have dodged my question. I don’t know what the consequences would have been.

As time passed, my family moved to different homes and different states. I did not hear those prayers again anywhere.

Until in my fourteenth year when I stumbled upon one of the lines from that prayer – “La ilaha illallah”. The second I read it in a Dan Brown novel, the cord of familiarity struck. I knew this was that very line I would hear every Friday, early in the mornings and during the evenings for some years. I’m a simple person. I smile for even small reasons. So, there I was, staring at those lines on my laptop screen and smiling.

“La ilaha illallah”(can you hear it in your mind the way they sing it? I can) simply means “There is no God but The God”. Now don’t misinterpret this line. Saket Gokhale, an accomplished ex-journalist and current National Spokesperson, AITC, tweeted two years back, “The meaning of this is NOT that only the God of Muslims is God. It merely means that other than God, let no other thing be worshipped as God.”

This makes me think about “The God”. God? What God or Who God? Does this thing or man really exist?

Well, I don’t know.

For me, God is simply my belief that there exists someone or something, who doesn’t judge me based on my looks or thoughts. He is someone who keeps me going.

He is someone whom I can talk to and confess fearlessly.
I don’t know his voice.
Nor do I know what he looks like.
But my belief in that someone or something makes me believe in life and magic.

That he is with me all the time and can help me miraculously out of any situation or hardship.
That he is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.
That he brought me here for a purpose or perhaps no purpose!

Who knows?