The Babri-Masjid, a mosque, was built in Ayodhya, now part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in central-northern India, by a Moghul governor called Mir Baki in the early 1500s, in honor of the first Mughal emperor Babar who had invaded India at the time. Babar was based in the Delhi-Agra region. Subsequently his heirs ruled most of India for over 300 years. Ram is a God of the Hindu Pantheon, considered an 'avatar' of Vishnu, one of the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which is responsible for the cycle of creation, destruction and the time in between. Ram is a mythological character, just as Zeus or Thor, and his entire story forms the basis of the 'Ramayana', one of the two major Indian mythological stories, the other being the Mahabharata. Sometime in this century, a theory cropped up suggesting that the Babri-Masjid was the birthplace of Ram and had been built after destroying a Hindu temple that had previously existed at the same site. There is no concrete evidence to support this, but then proof has never been necessary in matters of faith.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Hindu militant groups, with the support of the BJP, the party currently in power, stirred up a movement whose only aim was to break down the masjid and to construct a temple in honor of Ram. The land on which the masjid stood, was called 'Ram Janmabhoomi', meaning the birthplace of Ram. This movement gathered tremendous momentum and in the first week of December, more than 300,000 Hindus gathered in Ayodhya to carry out their 'duty', culminating in the events of December 6th.

Within hours of the event, the country erupted and riots started all over the country. Some of these were started by celebrating Hindus, and the others by enraged Muslims. The unrest spread like wildfire, engulfing whole cities, towns and villages, darkening the buildings and the souls of the people within. And this happened even in Mumbai, then still called Bombay. Within hours of the incident, Bombay was shown up to be like any other city in India and its reputation of being a secular, forward-looking, non-bigoted city lay in shreds. There was a time when we would proudly talk about how Bombay was different from the rest of the country, how the pursuit of Mammon united us all, irrespective of religion, caste or creed. We were proud of saying that it did not matter who you were as long as you were successful; unfortunately, under that veneer of peaceful, secular cohabitation, the demons of religious bigotry were still lurking, biding their time.

I was naïve enough to believe otherwise.

Muslims and Hindus battled it out throughout the city. People were hacked, shot, whole colonies of slums were burnt and for more than two weeks the city was under seige. No one ventured out, no one went to work and essential commodities just disappeared. Some semblance of sanity returned in about two weeks, only to disappear again on January 6, 1993, when the riots re-started. This time the intensity of rioting was worse and it took more than a month for things to settle. Just when things were limping back to normal, a series of bomb blasts ripped through different parts of the city in April, maiming and killing large numbers of innocent people, unfortunate enough to have been passing by or standing around at the sites of the blasts.

All of us were left scarred, physically and mentally.

Religion is still deeply ingrained in our psyche and insults to our religion, real or perceived are immediately assumed to be threats to our individual identities. When a mob of such threatened people gets together, there is mayhem. Friends, who I thought were liberal, started openly talking about other religions with intense hatred. The elders in the family shook their heads and talked about how leopards can never change their spots. Patients stopped going to doctors not of their own faith. Businesses preferred to deal only with those of their own ilk.

For a moment at the time, my faith in myself wavered too. What if everyone was correct and I was the fool. What if Islam was as bad as it was made out to be by the people around me. What if I was the idiot, insisting that all humans are innately good and that mob-behavior is an anomaly that is uncontrollable when it occurs, but which eventually comes back to haunt the souls of the very people who were part of the mob, the moment the mob fury abates and there is time for introspection. I managed to get through with my beliefs intact, but stopped voicing them, realizing that certain things are best left alone the way they are. This may sound very passive, but so be it. I am not sure anymore that I can change anyone's views, let alone the world.

I do wish though that I had more Muslim friends.

I also wish that the politicians would stay away from religion, since the use of religion in politics is what fans the dormant embers of disharmony. Politicians use religion and religious causes to curry favor in return for votes. Many religious groups vote en mass and thus form 'vote-banks', which can be tapped to help win elections. Fighting an election on a religious issue does no good, and only helps widen the already existing schisms.

What is it that makes people go mad in the name of religion? It is understandable that people devote time and energy to their religion for the calmness and security that a life of faith could bring. But to kill others to establish the superiority of your own religion, using the cloak of a perceived threat to one's own religion, is something I cannot understand. The explanations for this kind of behavior are obviously deeply rooted in the psyche and living conditions of our people. Maybe it's the way most Indians live their lives, struggling all the time, trying to get a decent two meals a day, a small roof over one's head and a little extra once in a while. When someone tells you that the reason you are poor or frustrated is because the people of the other religion are usurping what is your due right, it often starts making sense. And then it takes just that little oil to ignite the fire. I am neither a psychologist, nor a sociologist, but I guess one good way out would be to foster more mixing of the two religions, socially and otherwise.

And yet, Hindu-Muslim marriages are just so rare. And even if they do occur, they are often doomed from the beginning. Strong parental disapproval, radically different life-styles at home, peer-pressure and disapproval and arguments over how to bring up their children, often take their toll on a couple, which has probably run away to start a new life in a new home with the enormous, ensuing financial burden. A very, 'modern', tolerant mother of a friend of mine once told me, 'I don't mind my son marrying anybody...as long as she is not a Muslim.' And I know Muslims who have similar ideas about marriage to Hindus. There are times and places where hapless Hindu-Muslim couples unfortunate to have fallen in love, have been murdered by their own relatives for their impertinence. And this happens not just in India, but even in places like England.

It must be something innate to our upbringing. Second generation Indian-Americans and British-Indians fight it out on soc.culture.indian and soc.culture.pakistan, calling each other names, cussing, fighting, and generally trying to prove that the other religion is worse than the worst cesspool you can think of. Think about it; children of Indian or Pakistani, Hindu or Muslim parents, born and brought up in the US or UK, behaving like idiots. It doesn't make sense.

What does it matter that there is a new millenium dawning upon us. The real millenium will be the day when we can all live tolerantly. And though I am an eternal optimist, deep down inside I know that at least in my lifetime, religious tolerance will remain a dream. I wish I could be proved wrong, that there could be one day, just one day, when no one, anywhere in the world gets maimed or killed for being a member or part of a particular religious faith. Just one day.... Is that too much to ask for?

So we must fire up the illumination any way we can as we approach the shortest day of the year. It's only human to long for the light through the long dark evenings: the ancient burning of pagan bonfires, the lighting of oil in Jewish menorahs and candles in Christian advent wreaths; the plugging in of twinkly white Christmas tree lights in icicles of brightness against the eaves.

I've been trying to unknot the tangled strands of last year's hastily put-away decorations before too many more days have passed. I have also managed to unearth the menorah and the Hanukkah candles from their storage boxes under the stairs by late Friday afternoon. Time and sundown wait for no woman or man, Gentile or Jew.

A few years ago we used to have big fat bulb-like Christmas lights for the tree. They were almost night-light-sized, and they screwed in and out for easy replacement. Unfortunately they were also dark and garish and the colors were likely to chip off easily, which sort of broke the spell. They were the hues of a basic set of elementary-school tempera paints: blood red, military blue, yolk yellow, Halloween orange, and pool-table green. Martha Stewart would turn from such a mismatched display of tacky happiness in dismay and horror, and it's just as well, probably. She tampers too much with our traditions as it is.

When I was a kid I thought these lights were magical. We used to drive around our town and look at people's houses decorated with such lights. Many houses were done up entirely in Sun Oil's corporate colors of yellow and blue in a touchingly loyal gesture to a different kind of savior. I don't believe many of the houses in that part of town are even still standing, let alone alight in a display of worker gratitude.

And then, when I thought I couldn't get any more excited about Christmas, someone went and invented the tubular bubble lights when I was a teenager. I was still in the mindset that everything happening in the world was for my personal benefit and enjoyment. It's the baby boomers' legacy. So, these little bubbling lights joined the gay backdrop of big fat bulbs on our tree and it was truly a bright sight to behold.

Until 1973: the darkest, gloomiest year in recent Christmas memory in the United States. Bah humbug -- just thinking about it makes me mad all over again. Sure, sure -- there was an energy crisis. I understand energy, especially light energy, which is transmitted at a velocity of 186,000 miles per second. Basic math and economics; it takes a lot of oil to flash all that electromagnetic radiation onto our collective retinae. So, we could surely manage to turn off a light when we left a room for democracy and the American way. No prob.

I also went merrily along with the idea of turning back our thermostats to conserve heating oil because I had grown up in a stuffy and overheated house and I was ready for a change. But on November 26, 1973, when President Nixon declared that good and loyal Americans were not going to be lighting any outside lights for the Christmas holidays -- well! I went cold inside. So much for the Republican party, and things were never the same after that.

I think many of us understood, for the first time, the supreme power of our government to stand in the way of our particular pursuit of happiness. It was therefore no wonder and no surprise to me at all that Nixon went down in such disgrace just a short time afterward. I mean, what was the man thinking? The days were cold, short, and brutish and he allowed us no logical surcease. We ran him out of office.

The Christmas lights came back on the following year and gradually little twinkling and blinking white and pastel multicolored lights replaced the big old bulbs. A disco feeling began to prevail in some circles, with colored gels and reflectors spinning new colors against silver and baby-blue flocked trees. Not to my taste, but I would never demean any person's attempt to over-light a dark corner of their homes at this time of year.

Which brings us to this year, this particularly important manifestation of our ability to light the lights and rout the darkness. Strings of Christmas lights are inexpensive and are sold year-round these days as more and more restaurants and trendoid botiquey stores drape them lavishly and light them each and every night of the year. Every once in a while, I buy an extra box or two of lights, just for the fun of it.

And I have already draped all my white lights on the shrubbery in my front courtyard and around a small tree of unknown parentage. I'm untangling the wads of marquee-running colored lights this week. I will be ready with quite a nice, knock-your-eyeballs-out big pine tree covered will all my favorite stuff. I have a remote-type device that allows me to light the tree from across the room.

My clean, well-lighted room will therefore be all in readiness as I watch the supreme light of lights, the big ball of the century, begin its minute-long descent in New York's Times Square exactly one minute before midnight this December 31st. I will hold my breath as this brand new crystal and reflective kazillion-watt ball approaches the big light array of 2-0-0-0. What a thrill this will be ...

If -- and only if -- those numbers light up. Lord help us if they don't. Bonfire, anyone?