Kamal Ghorui
Long before the Covid pandemic made physical contact with others in the form of the Western handshake a no-no for fear of infection, the namaste, the salutation of bidding ‘Welcome’ and ‘Farewell’, had a truly universal significance.
Elegant and graceful, in the true sense of the term as being full of grace, the namaste is far preferable as a gesture of goodwill to the Western custom of shaking hands, which, reasons of personal hygiene apart, only too often can turn into a contest of bone-crushing machismo, or conversely, feel like physical intimacy being taken with a dead fish, limp and damp.
Most of us perform the namaste as a matter of routine social protocol, like covering one’s mouth while yawning, and not picking one’s nose, at least not in full public view.
But a post doing the rounds of social media reminds us that there is a profound wealth of meaning behind the act of putting the palms of our hands together, often erroneously described as ‘folding one’s hands’, which would require bones of plasticine pliability that can be made to assume shapes of origamic ingenuity.
The word Namaste is derived from ‘Nama’, meaning ‘to bow’, and ‘Te’, meaning ‘you’.
So when we do a Namaste to someone, we are saying, through the sign language of the Anjali mudra, that we are bowing to the other.
Far from being a sign of obsequious humility, like Chinese kowtowing is said to be, the implied bow is an acknowledgment of the universal Brahmatma that, through the individual Atma, unifies all of humanity, without division of nationality, race, religion, or language.
The gesture of the namaste embodies a spiritual significance. It is a form of momentary meditation in that by conjoining our hands at a level with our heart, we are said to connect nerve circuitry, which promotes calmness and a sense of inward peace, which is emanated towards the person being so greeted.
So the next time we offer someone a namaste, we are affording ourselves, and its recipient, a glimpse on Earth of Hi heaven.
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