It was a slow, warm afternoon, and something was bothering Jeeva.
"Aaji," he said at last, "do you think God has favourites? At school the
teacher likes the clever children best. The headman likes the rich families
best. Even the village dog likes the people who feed him best. So... does God
love some people more than others? Does He love the priest more than me? Does
He love a rich man more than a poor boy from a Warli house?"
Aaji was sitting near the window, where the late sun came slanting into the
room in a long golden bar. She patted the floor beside her, and Jeeva came
and sat in the warm light.
"Listen to what Krishna himself said," Aaji began. "I am the same to all
beings. No one is hated by Me, and no one is My favourite. Do you hear that,
Jeeva? Not the priest more than you. Not the rich man more than the poor boy.
The same. The very same, to every single one."
Jeeva frowned. "Then why do some people feel so close to God, and others
don't feel anything at all?"
Aaji pointed to the bar of sunlight pooling on the mud floor between them.
"Look at the sun," she said. "It shines on every wall of every house in the
village, exactly the same. The rich man's wall and our wall. The temple wall
and the cowshed wall. The sun does not choose. It pours itself out on
everyone."
She lifted her hand into the golden light, and it glowed warm on her old skin.
"But," she said, "the house with its window shut tight stays dark inside, even
though the same sun is blazing right outside. And the house that throws its
window wide open" — she nodded at their own open shutter, at the light filling
the room — "is full of warmth and brightness. Not because the sun loved it
more. Because it opened up and let the love in."
Jeeva looked at the sunlight on his own hand.
"So God loves everybody the same," he said slowly, "but the ones who love Him
back and open their hearts... they feel it more. Krishna said it too, didn't
he? Those who love Me are in Me, and I am in them."
"Yes," said Aaji, smiling. "He shines on every wall the same, my Jeeva. You
only have to open the window."
And Jeeva leaned back into the warm gold light, and felt, for a long quiet
moment, exactly how much of it had been waiting for him all along.
