When I was a child I simply couldn’t understand who the “Our Father” in the great prayer was. I blundered about looking for some explanation. Peering into his room at our journalist father sleeping, I asked Ravi my brother, “Ithu aano-- our father ?” because indeed he was our father. No, signaled my twin, far more intelligent and practical than I.

Then….whose father were we praying to in school ?

My friend Shirley Sculley suffered from no such confusion.

“Its Jesus’ father we are praying to….”…

“Where is Jesus’ mother ?”

“She only is Mother Mary, you saw no --- in the chapel?”

“But Mary’s husband was Joseph and Our Father is in Heaven ”

“ Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ real father.”

Ah ! Just as Dasaratha wasn’t Sreeraman’s “real” father. Okay, that was understandable. Sreeraman was actually Mahavishnu, so he too must have come from this Our Father who was in Heaven.

I carried on my academic investigations at home.

“Is Our Father Sreeraman’s father also?” I asked my mother who, perturbed by my imagination filling so rapidly with Christian influence, had set up a counter movement at home, reading aloud from the Ramayana, lighting lamps and decorating a pooja space for us children to enjoy. I loved the gold-spangled painting of SreeRama, Seetha Devi, Lakshmanan and Hanuman. I stood on my toes and examined the picture carefully for signs of a cross. No. No sign of blood or pain in the picture, no long faces, instead, everyone was dressed in silks and jewels and looked very happy. My mother’s answers came slowly.

“Yes He must be, but we give Him another name because…. well… we are from another part of the world.”

“Will Jesus and Sreeraman be speaking the same language in Heaven?”

“I don’t know but Im sure they understand one another.”

Then one day my mother’s brother came visiting. She kept calling him “Valliya Ettan”. Elder brother. So ? “We have the same father but he is now in heaven,” she explained referring to my late grandfather. In that epiphanic moment I realized that “Our Father” was everyone’s father. I also arrived at an even better idea --- if Our Father was everyone’s father, then Jesus who was Our Father’s son had to be my Valliya Ettan. I badly wanted a Valliya Ettan because all I had to boast of was a twin brother, and much though I loved him, he was shorter than me. I was very happy and announced the results of my research.

“Isnt that so?” I jiggled my long-suffering mother’s arm for a response

“I don’t know Mini….!.”

But I knew.

With the supreme confidence of a six -year -old, I was sure I was right.