When I was small, my parents took me to the Mansa Devi temple, in Chandigarh, every year. At each visit, they would religiously prepare prasad (food) and then distribute it in one of the dining halls where langar (free meal) was given. I would often help them serve and distribute this food to countless devotees sitting on the floor. At the end of our visit, we would stroll by those countless small shops outside the temple and buy cheap collectibles and toys. At that time, my understanding of this whole annual, temple-visiting exercise was limited. For me, therefore, going to Mansa Devi was always about getting a brand new toy.

I did not understand then why should we bother with pleasing a goddess that seemed too unpredictable in the first place. I had prayed and requested several luxurious, impossible gifts from her, and she did not deliver on several occasions. Also, I used to wonder why should we go about feeding the poor and hungry when every donation you made seemed to land in a bottomless pit. What I got in return for my silly questions was that “Good Karma must be done. You will be rewarded, sooner or later.”

Fast forward to present and here I am, smiling at my foolish, younger self.

Thousands of miles away from Chandigarh, here in New Jersey, and decades later, it seems that I am getting rewarded after all. My wife has recently gone to visit her parents back home in India, leaving me behind, literally poor and hungry. Luckily, however, there’s a Durga temple right next to where I live, and they happen to offer free food every Sunday evening. So, yours truly, goes there every Sunday, very religiously, and reaps his rewards. So much so, this devotee has even optimized the timing of the entry into the dining hall so that not only I get a full, free dinner but also an extraordinary quantity of left-over food which I can take home. This left-over food that I bring home lasts me for several days and before it’s too long another Sunday pops by and yours truly lives to tell the tale.

Now I know the depth and profundity of that holy exercise. Now I understand what Karma is. Now, after all these years, I know what they meant by the words: “Good Karma must be done. You will be rewarded, sooner or later.”