In the beginning when I moved to Bangalore, the morning chanting at 5 am from the muezzin used to wake me up, before I turned over and continued to sleep. After a few weeks, I did not notice his singing and more, and if, then I could distinguish that the mosque on Richmond Road in my neighbourhood (picture below) had two different muezzins in charge. Each of them had his own style, and naturally, their voices were different.
Today, for some reason, I was awake at 5 am and heard the muezzin chanting, and a minute later the bells of catholic St. Patrick's Church started to ring in parallel. And this in a country of, not to forget, an 80-percent Hindu-majority. That indeed one of the miracles of India, where secularism is embroidered in the constitution not for the sake of absence of religions, but as the very foundation for the diversity of them. Given the 1bn population, this arrangement has worked with few exceptions amazingly well.
Although in share a clear minority, India is in absolute terms of 150 mn after Indonesia home to the most number of Muslims worldwide. Shashi Tharoor, author of "The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone" rightly points out that this tolerant and secular outlet of India has been a guarantee that Muslims in India feel intrinsically Indian as opposed to having a possibly natural affinity to Pakistan which was formed as an Islamic Republic after the Partition in 1947.
After listening to the muezzins of my neighbourhood for more than four years, if not in the early morning then at the other four occasions a day, I always have considered their call for prayer bearing something solemn. Also, I wondered what they were actually chanting. The beauty of the internet of 2008 is that the knowledge which was always there, is all of a sudden equally distributed. So I found this enlightening piece on YouTube which comes apparently from a mosque in Bosnia and carries "subtitles". "My" muezzin in Bangalore just chanted for the evening prayer, I listened, compared, and for the first time after four years, I felt to comprehend.
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