Faith

As a child I believed in God, because my mom did. My father was mostly agnostic. We attended pujas, went to temples (not to regularly) and followed a 5-minute evening puja ritual. That was it, as far as our involvement with ‘God’ went.

As we grew older, we were allowed to figure out God for ourselves. My brother turned mostly atheist. I kept trying to look for evidence either ways. Still I had complete faith, more than friends who did pujas and fasts but continued to be amazed at my ‘Now, God wants me to sleep’ logic the night before exams. Well if God wanted me to study all night, He wouldn’t make me sleepy, would He?

(In terms of gender-neutral, politically correct language the ‘He’ would be disputed, but I went to a Catholic convent school and that is how we wrote all our lives).

Those days are long gone, I never found logical evidence to prove there was a God and continued to question my faith. 

Today I went to the house of my friend who passed away yesterday. She had been struggling with major health issues for almost 20 years. Her mother had been her rock all these years. And today, while even neighbours and strangers were struggling to hold back tears, her mother was talking about her life with a smile.

You know, there were so many times when we almost lost her. But she would always recover. God wanted her to live. This time she did not. That’s what God wanted for her.

That is faith. 

Rational or not, that has such immense power.