FAITH

Faith: the great healing power

Faith! I wonder what you understand by the word. You say that you have become cynic because you had such and such experience- but is it really so? Do we loose faith because of external factors? Is not cynism an attitude we are born with? You may not agree but I think you would still have become a cynic if your experience were any different. As a four year old ' I believed that on Christmas day Santa Clause would keep my toy under my pillow- and could not realize why Santa did not do so. Was I at fault! Santa did come and fulfill my friend Bittu's wish in the form of a beautiful red toy car. Was Bittu a better child than me? The truth was only very plain- Bittu was blessed with a pair of loving & caring parents and I had a father who was alcoholic and a mother who was a patient of depression.. But I never lost faith. It is true that next year also as a five year old I wished and prayed for a gift from Santa Clause and the disappointment this time was greater than last year. Santa did bless Bittu more even at his birth and for that matter I was also relatively more blessed to have found a home than those children loitering in the street. My elder brother took me aside and gently broke the truth. The feeling was of both disappointment and relief. Oh it is so hard to believe that there is really no Santa Clause to shower us with gifts but then I was happy that I was not a bad girl. But did I loose faith? The answer again is No. In those early childhood my big brother impressed me by pointing out that God resides in everything even the brick walls and I should not hurt anything and I always avoided hurting the tables and chairs and all furniture and now I realize, that I got away from hurting myself. My brother said- God knows everything and so if I tell a lie or steal sugar from the kitchen or even think of doing so God will definitely know and that knocked me down. I never grew out of the feeling of some one watching over me. It is both reassuring and correcting I still am afraid of offending God when I think ill of people I do not like- and that is quite often- I must admit- but atleast I am aware of my action and the presence of the Almighty inside me. My having faith in God is not due to anything supernatural that I experienced but only because I trusted my brother and believed in what he said. In sort I had enormous faith in my brother and the power faith has on us may be akin to a super power.

One or two years later I had a bitter experience of breach of trust. It was like this- after one of my aunts got married to a very rich man, we the children were fortunate to get Rs.10/- each as gift. In those days- in the early fifties- ten rupees were a lot of money and we all made plans to buy the choicest things with it. I had a doll and I wanted little furniture for it, bed, almirah, dressing table and so many things. But I was too small to buy them by myself and so I took Makhan Sarkar, our caretaker, into confidence. He assured me that he would ask the carpenter working at the shop down the street to make little furniture for my doll and took the money from me. Days went by but the furniture never came. Whenever I enquired, and that was atleast 5 times a day, our caretaker would keep on assuring me that those were being built and that he had himself seen them in the making- until one day he announced with an angry face that shop owner was a cheat and he had fled the town with my money and ofcourse of many others, closing the shop forever. I wept broken hearted and cursed the shop owner and hoped that he would meet with all sorts of misfortune, only to beg of God not to punish me for my wishing ill of someone. When at a later stage , I was entering into my teens, I came to know that Makhan Sarkar was a cheat and that he was the cause of many of our misfortune, I could not be angry with him- as my anger subsided with time- but my faith did not. I believed and still believe that he must have suffered equally in the hands of Mother Nature. I may be wrong and he may have lived happily ever after, but the fact that faith can heal an injured soul as nothing else can stands.

These two experiences have taught me a few very important truths about life. First , we should realize and accept that life is full of mystery which we can never explain. For example as a child I did not realize why Santa is not coming to fulfill my wishes, then as I started growing up I blamed it on my parents, but now I know even they cannot be blamed for their action and/or inaction, for who knows, what had driven them to alcoholism and depression and this way the

reasoning will go on endlessly? We can only accept life as it comes and try to improve upon it and have faith in ourselves .

Secondly and more importantly, I realized that while I could not forgive Makhan Sarkar for cheating me as a child, I have been blessed with the first hand experience of how a child's heart bleeds when its hope is destroyed, so as far as we can, we should always try to keep the trust that children may place on us.

These were very early and harsh experiences , obviously a lot more in number and in strength came later in life alongwith wonderfully happy experiences, some of which linger in my memory, some have perished with time, that I had of life but I could never be a cynic. Clouds for me have always a silver lining. So perhaps faith, the great healing power comes from within and not without reason.

Comments

adsense:flexiblock:location