Hearts Still Care

In my family, religion has never been a matter of compulsion, inheritance, or rigid tradition. It has been a deeply personal and often private path—respected, explored, questioned, and above all, lived with empathy. We are a family not bound by sameness, but knitted together by love, resilience, and the shared grace of accepting each other as we are.

The generation before mine taught me this without ever having to explain it in so many words. My mother, a Parsi woman, met and fell in love with my father, a Sikh man. Their union was not seen kindly by many in her community, and she was shunned—albeit briefly—before her parents came around and welcomed her back. That moment of reconciliation, to me, holds more spiritual weight than any sermon could offer.

On my father’s side, every sibling followed their own truth, and none bowed to the pressures of uniformity. My eldest paternal aunt married a Maharashtrian Hindu man with four children. She chose not to have biological children of her own because she wished to raise his as hers. She did so with grace and devotion, speaking fluent Marathi, transforming his household into a space of warmth. He passed away just five years into their marriage, at a time when they were only beginning to build something tender and lasting.

My second paternal aunt married a Gujarati man with children from a previous marriage, and once again, she made the choice not to bear children, instead pouring her love into me and my sister. She was more of a father to us than our own, who fell into alcoholism not long after I was born.

My paternal uncle married an American Catholic woman—an intercultural and intercontinental union—though the marriage did not last. Yet she was known to all of us, accepted fully during the time she was part of our family.

On my mother’s side, the inter-faith marriage she entered into was a rarity. Her siblings all married within the Parsi fold. But then came the next generation: my cousin Natasha, the daughter of my maternal aunt, married a Malayali Catholic. No one raised an eyebrow. It was accepted as natural—as it should be.

My own sister married a Kashmiri Pandit. Other cousins married Catholics, Gujaratis, Hindus—no one seemed to view these marriages as transgressions. To us, they were unions of love, not religious negotiations.

As for me—I have loved a Hindu man. I have loved a Muslim man. I have loved a Danish Christian. And I am an atheist. The irony is not lost on me. But I don’t find contradiction here. I find cohesion. I do not reject belief systems—I observe, absorb, appreciate, and honour what others hold dear. In many ways, that is my faith: the sanctity of personal belief, whether present or absent.

Recently, I had a conversation with an acquaintance about this tapestry of interfaith relationships in my family. His response stunned me. He said something to the effect that such a thing would never be allowed in his family. And worse, he spoke with a tone of disdain—almost pity. For the first time in a long while, I was made to question whether what I had always considered a strength—this lived secularism, this openness—could be seen as a flaw.

It shook me. For a fleeting moment, I felt dislodged from my own certainty, my own probable pride in coming from a family that embraced diversity as if it were the most natural thing. But I recovered that sense quickly. Because what he dismissed is, in truth, what I hold dearest: a family that opens its doors wide, where beliefs may differ but love remains constant.

As a child, I was educated in a convent school. I learnt Catholic prayers. My paternal grandmother taught me Sikh prayers. My mother still prays every Friday—a habit I have inherited in spirit if not in ritual. From friends and relatives, I’ve picked up Hindu customs, observed Jain decorum, joined in Eid celebrations, decorated the tree each Christmas, danced in the colours of Holi, and set up Pooja rituals during Diwali. I celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi, Bhau Beej, Rakhi, Dussehra, and Navratri. Every festival that holds meaning for someone I love, holds meaning for me too.

As I see it, religion is not a divide. It is an offering—one that can be accepted with grace, even if not practiced. Love is the force that ties all these practices together. Belief is not a boundary but a bridge.

“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.”

— Swami Vivekananda

My upbringing has taught me that India is not one story. It is a grand, complex novel—interwoven with hundreds of narratives, dialects, faiths, food traditions, music, prayers, and paths. It is not unity through sameness. It is unity through difference.

And for those who reject that difference, who turn away from the beauty of co-existence, I can only feel sadness. Because they are missing out—not just on festivals, or food, or languages—but on the rich, life-changing encounters that can shape a soul.

I may be an atheist, but I believe—deeply, fervently—in the sanctity of human connection. And perhaps that is the greatest faith of all.