April | 2020 | Maleccha

Karen Armstrong is my favourite scholar on religion. Her works can be dry and may not be relished by all readers. Yet her insights are important and relevant for everyone interested in religion. She always emphasized that one should critique religion, must do that, and that exercise should be undertaken with a sense of empathy.

Recently, I finished listening to her book: The Bible on Storytel. No, she did not write a new Bible. The Bible by Karen Armstrong is a biography of Bible or Biblical traditions, spread across the two major religious belief systems: Christians and Jews, and their various strands.

In the biography, she goes back to the times when Jews worshipped many gods and Yehaveh was one of them. The evolution of God, different scriptures: Torah, Talmud, New Testament, Jesus, Holy Trinity and different traditions of reading of scripture, the story of Moses and his law are all well explained in the book. The Biblical traditions both in Judaism and Christianity are diverse.

Some of the Biblical traditions are violent and inspire the crusaders, xenophobia, Nazism and apartheid and others preach charity and love thy neighbour, do not treat the others, the way you do not want to be treated. She is not hesitant in talking about the violence of religion, patriarchy, inspired by the scriptures.

While she does that, she also reflects on compassion, another attribute of religion. In the study of Bible, she shares that it is well understood amongst circles of scholarship that Jewish texts constituted the foundations of Christianity, what is not mentioned is that across the centuries, there was a healthy culture of sharing and exchange of learning and understanding between the Rabbis and the Bishops.

Another aspect which is very rarely mentioned is the influence of Islam on Biblical understanding. She does not say it directly, but one can gather that the traces of the mystical framework of ‘Anal al Haq’ of the Sufi mystic can also be found in Kabbalah, the Jewish mysticism.

Karen is also critical of the modern Biblical fanaticism, which has erupted in the Bible belt of the United States and Israel, where the fundamentalists have started reading the scripture in a literal sense and discarded the scientific consensus. This is where her emphasis on ‘study or critique religion with a sense of empathy,’ becomes very important. She shares that we need to rise above the literary reading of the scripture and widen its scope by having compassion and be welcoming for all, it doesn’t matter whether one is a homosexual, a woman or a person of other belief, they all should be loved and not judged.

In these times of lockdown, I have been travelling across Latin America with Paul Theroux, a snob yet an observant author. He starts his journey in the United States, in a suburban train and after taking the multiple trains in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, (skipping Nicaragua) Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, he reaches the last functional railway station in Patagonia, Argentina, at the end of Americas.

During the last decade, I have read many travelogues by Paul Theroux, travelled in the trains with him, in Europe, in West Asia, South and Southeast East and then in the Trans Siberian Express. Travelling in train helps you check the nerve of the host nation, it gives you a closer glance of life there. My love for the Railways has been inspired by the works of Theroux. I travelled in trains in India, Myanmar, Europe, Sri Lanka and a little bit in Vietnam, thanks to the insights given by the legendary travel writer.

Throughout his travelogues, Theroux keeps emphasizing that it is the journey which matters the most than the destination, the emotions you go through when you are on the move, the observations you make when you get a moving picture of your surroundings. They all are aspects which make your travel adventure worth undertaking.

When anyone asks him, what do you do? He declares himself a Geography teacher, who can be anywhere in the world, learning about the ways of the world. If I ever taught geography (being a geographer myself) in the school, I will recommend travelogues and especially those of Theroux as must-reads, as they are far richer than the average textbook of geography.

In this given travelogue, ‘The Old Patagonian Expression,’ while on the move, he makes pertinent observations about the dictatorial political culture in South American countries, role of United States in the politics of its own backyard, relationship between the indigenous communities and those of the European descent, the economies and the topography and the wild football matches. The podcast of the travelogue is available on Storytel. You can close your eyes, and switch on the narration and let your imagination have wings, taking you across the world to South America and there you travel in trains with Theroux.

Someday I would like to follow his path and travel across South America in the Railways.