Since I have the privilege of living both in the East and the West of the globe and had enjoyed and experienced the ups and downs of the world, I thought of giving a few pages in my forthcoming book-“Am I A Christian?” a window for my readers to have an understanding of how Christ is upheld in a a Buddhist country like mine when I was growing up there in the 60s.

I was born in a tiny island known as the pearl of the Indian ocean and grew up peacefully in a Hindu neighborhood. Instead of looking down on Hinduism and Buddhism as pagan religions and distancing from them, we, the Christians in the minority tried to live amicably with our neighbors and coworkers respecting their faiths.

As a kid, I had gone to Hindu temples with my friends and watched various poojas and festivals with interest. Likewise, my friends too had come with me to church and Sunday school. Our parents never objected us from doing that. During the Hindu New Year and other festivities, our neighbors would send us plates of jaggery sweetened milk rice with other home made sweets for festive time and as there were only a two or three Christian families in my Hindu neighborhood, from morning till noon, plates of sweet meats would be lining up on our dining table. My sisters and I would have fun choosing the best plate of sweets as the winner for that year. Respecting the fact that we, Christians avoid eating food offered to idols, our neighbors sent us food kept separate and not offered to their gods. . And during Christmas, our house would be an open house for anyone in the neighborhood to drop in without invitation.

When we moved to Canada in my forties, I looked for a sun rise Easter morning service to attend and I was much disappointed to find none to attend in the city. In the past 40 yrs I’ve lived in the west, I had worshipped on Easter Sunday at various churches and in different countries. But never had an Easter Sunday passed by without me thinking of the sunrise Easter services I attended at the small country church nearby in my native country.

On a typical Easter morning over there, after getting up around five in the morning and pouring buckets of cold water on my head to wake me up and scrubbing myself well with sandalwood soap to smell good and dressing up in something soft and white that reflects Easter, I would get ready to go to the service. As my parents rarely attended church and my older siblings had already left home for college and work, I usually went with my friends to go to church.

On Easter morning, those of us kids who wanted to attend the service met at one of our neighbor’s house and from there, with a lighted candle in one hand and clanging the tambourine in the other, we walked joyfully towards our church singing , ” Hallelujah, He’s risen!” in our native tongue. As we passed the Hindu temple on the way and turned the corner toward the street leading to our church, we’d see flickering candles ahead and hear the sound of drums and singing coming from the opposite direction by other fellow church members. None of the Hindu neighbors in our neighborhood had ever objected to the sound of drums or our singing at those early hours of the day.

Once we all reached the entrance gate of our church, we waited for the church bell to gong thrice for us to enter. As the organist started playing the organ ,we would file in a line and walk down the aisle of the church and take our seats on the wooden pews. The sanctuary beautifully decorated in white Easter lilies and the people dressed mostly in white would look so serene and beautiful.

Easter Sunday was the day usually selected for the children to get baptized and for adults to get confirmed to become members of the church. Immersion baptism was not practiced at our church at that time. And when I got confirmed I received my very own Bible from the hand of my pastor.

We never grew up hunting for Easter eggs or hearing about Easter bunnies. It was in Sweden, when I accompanied my husband for his post graduate studies I got to see snow and taste Easter egg in chocolate for the first time. When we were invited for the Easter brunch by my husband’s professor and wife, we saw boiled eggs sitting in front of our plates. Our hosts had a hearty laugh in watching our amazed look on seeing chocolate instead of the yellow yolk inside the egg.

I’m not sure whether the sunrise Easter service is still happening at my home church even now. As years pass by old traditions too get ignored or omitted to suit the culture of the age. Sadly we live in a world that is becoming more market oriented and less Christ centered. Our children are growing up in such a culture. However, let us be thankful for the freedom to worship in whatever way we want and wherever we want. Let us never take this freedom we have now for granted as they are not so in many other countries.

In my book, I have written about the three-hour -Good Friday services too I had attended as a teenager. Since those church services played a role in strengthening my faith and reverence in God, I wanted to share those facts with my readers to give a glimpse of how Christ is upheld in reverence even in a Hindu and Buddhist country like mine when I was growing up.