Ringing of Bells – a poem by Debasis Tripathy

 Ringing of Bells
 
You enter the temple, you ring the brass bell.
The sacred belief to alert God before entering 
his house. No one wants to intrude upon privacy
preserved for him. Who wants to incur the wrath?
The result is a rigour, relentless in ringing―
high-pitched music repeating Aum, Aum, Aum ... 
It is this rigour that I love. The repetition
of an ordinary act producing an extraordinary
acoustical event. Common men & women transforming 
into anthropomorphic forms of the divine. The wonder
of rigour. I search for God sometimes, mostly 
outside of where he regularly resides. When 
I go to a temple, it's here outside, on the steps,
I like the most. I see the divine in the eyes
of seekers, depending on their devotion 
to someone I never got to see. It is logical 
for me to be an atheist or even an agnostic,
but I am a firm believer in shapes & sounds,
sanity & simplicity. I believe because I want 
to be happy. I want my heart to be open 
like my ears, open to the ringing of bells.

Debasis Tripathy works for an IT Company in Bangalore. He also writes – poems and short fiction.  His recent work has been featured in Squawk Back, Collidescope, Turnpike, Adelaide Magazine, Kitaab , Punch Magazine & elsewhere.  Occasionally, he tweets at @d_basis