No epic battle unfolded in song or sky more dramatically than the narratives of two religions as they met in my mind nearly half a century ago. I must have been six or seven years old when I was listening to Bible stories in school and tales from the Hindu puranas at home.

Watching my Mother narrating the Ramayana to me and noting my fascination with the life of Christ, my Aunt said, “Our gods dance, they play the flute, they take sides in human fights, they get married, they kill demons, they don’t die.”

“But he didn’t die,” I countered quickly, knowing what and whom she was referring to.

“Is that so?”

“He returned and many people saw him too.” I said, hoping I was right. The Resurrection was somehow a bit too difficult for a child to understand and reconcile with, in relation to someone who had walked the earth and eaten bread and fish.

There were occasional veiled criticisms of Hinduism in school but I didn’t pay much attention to the counter propaganda from either side.

I didn’t have much difficulty in reconciling the two worlds I was living in simultaneously, but my questions led me nowhere. If Samson and David were favoured by the same God who had empowered Hanuman, why hadn’t they turned up to help Sree Raman’s harum-scarum army? What had Anantha the divine serpent been doing when the Serpent in Eden was making his moves? A game I enjoyed was “making pairs”. Wise kings: Janaka and Solomon; seers: Moses and Vasishta; strong men: Samson and Bhima; sharp-shooters: Arjuna and David; the Great Flood and Pralayam; the parting of the Sea for Moses, and the river Yamuna for baby Krishna as Vasudeva carried him to safety;Methuselah and Jambavan; Aum and Amen; the Trinity and Trimurthi. They were not entirely accurate but they were the findings of a child.

There was only one person in this giant game of pairs who had no equivalent in the faith I’d inherited. He was the one in the jigsaw I couldn’t find a gap for. He was unslottable. The one who had walked everywhere in sun-bitten and dusty Judaea—no horses or chariots for him-- a penniless teacher who had lived like a bhikshu on casual gifts of food and shelter, yet feeding and comforting the multitudes. He stood apart, he had refused to fight. He went about encouraging people to think differently (“It is written…but I say to you…”) and preaching a way of life so revolutionary that it called for a moral and social upheaval. He denounced love of wealth and the accumulation of personal advantages at the expense of others. There were no privileges, rebates or excuses in his doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven.

As I grew older and things became more complex, the promise of the gospels honeycombed through my life and I thought about their Teachings a lot. What if they were not true? “Show him the other cheek.” Was the Hiroshima bomb the other cheek? But the American presidents swore on the Bible! Turning the other cheek. Was it really possible without getting thrashed or laughed at? What if Rama had shown his other cheek to Ravana? Sree Krishna’s advice seemed much more sensible “Rise up O glorious one and fight” he urged the Pandava prince --who sat slumped at the sight of his uncles and cousins arrayed against him in battle-- explaining that at all costs, dharma had to be protected.

I could understand Arjuna’s problems with his cousins because there were certainly days when I felt like hammering my brother only to feel sorry for it afterwards; but Christ hadn’t wanted people to fight even their enemies!

There was no one I could clear my religious doubts with. To add to my confusion, I read about Popes who had maintained armies, and ridden into battle. How could they have preached, “He who takes the sword shall fall by it.” Everything seemed to be at sixes and sevens. It was enough to send a twelve-year-old into depression.

Though a good teacher can make a school-goer understand how Gandhiji mixed Christian teaching with the Hindu-Jain ideal of ahimsa to design a strategy to deal with powerful opponents by making them feel spiritually inferior, I realized very slowly that only exceptional people lived their faiths.

At the theoretical level the links were growing clearer. “He who seeks to save his life shall lose it…the first shall be the last”. These mysterious words fitted with the law of karma, which said that better times awaited those who struggled to live a pure life in their present incarnation. It didn’t matter if someone looked like s/he was succeeding unfairly in the current life. If I kept the faith, my reward -- if not in Heaven -- as a Hindu, was going to be great in my next life.

But the most mysterious thing was the idea of sacrifice.

Nothing is more unstoppable or self-assertive than a complete giving. It was true that my Hindu gods did not die, but Christ had died not because he couldn’t save himself but because he hadn’t wanted to be saved.

There was no match for that in any book or song.