The Faucets of Faith: The Dry Pond of Human Miseries

 **12 June 2003**

If the hot *loos* virtually baked the area for the past eleven days, then on the twelfth, just when it seemed all probable that life might be vaporised off from the face of this part of the world, cool eastern wind, with its cooler portion of humidity, turned things around.

It only proves that there is no single face to nature.

If it, in its blind fury, makes its creations weak, then, like an ever-eager-for-redemption mother, it puts a soothing hand on the suffering shoulder as well.

So it is a real salutation to the multifarious face of nature when one hears the cool, soothing words of some heat-lynched farmer:

"I would have certainly died if not for this life-giving turnaround by the wind."

And with a bit of eased-up spirits due to the cool easterly wind, I am able to talk about faith healing.

It's an important thing in the countryside, where health facilities are always falling short of meeting even the most basic demands.

Faith healing fills up many a void in a system where disease, destitution and depravity are stock.

The teeming millions of people flock to these faith healers, yielding panacea to all the evils, cosily ensconced in the almost inviolable sanctity of their holy halls, cottages, ashrams and complexes across the length and breadth of this big country, lumbering on with the wheels of faith, blind mostly, reason, technology, etc., etc.

It's a vast, dreadful rivulet flowing to the sea of salvation.

There are so many problems, wars, sufferings, displeasures, unredeemed sufferings, unfulfilled desires, unmet victories, futile journeys, futile steps, missteps and miscarriages around us that all systems and management at the personal, group, institutional, social or governmental level turn topsy-turvy, leaving the teeming masses under the merciless glare of the blazing sun of mystery.

They flock to the apparently life-giving shelter of faith.

Their confidence lying dusting around their lethargic, imbalanced footsteps.

Their eyes cast down in abject meekness.

Their reason imprisoned in the narrowest of cells.

Their faculties lying dormant to all practical promptings for a battle, all under the spell of such abject surrender.

The holy men appear unbelievably larger than any possible human life.

In the majority of cases, faith becomes a shackle and the faithful a prisoner, and the upkeeper of faith just an extortionist.

Plagued by problems, you start believing in such inexplicable and mysterious forces acting at the supernatural level.

Doubts, meanwhile, continue buzzing in your ears.

You want to listen to them, but then you want to shut off your ears too.

It is just a conflicting, hypnotising, contradicting clamour, and you just a senselessly eavesdropping, poor and pathetic man.

In this big melee, godmen appear the strong men, giving clarion calls from their raised pedestals.

You fear being lost out in this treacherously busy thoroughfare.

You want to cling to the steps leading to the terrace.

You scuffle with your fellow devotees, fall into arguments, cast jealous eyeshots around—a bickering flock of sheep fighting for a space in the enclosure.

Otherwise, the evil wolves will tear the soft, woolly shell.

And they, the herders, speak and preach the words which fall most often in our ears, but with new meanings and vigour every time when spoken by them.

When you bow your head unto the holy, the holy feet of a faith healer, you surrender your chiding, rebuking, fighting worth.

The voice of your logic and confidence.

He speaks ambiguous words, gives ambiguous solutions, casts ambiguous forecasts, and you, like an intelligent and well-prepared schoolboy, fill the blanks left by him to complete the unhappy personal story, to chalk out a happy ending bestowed by him.

The dry pond of misery is too large and the tap of luck, efforts, achievements and success too small.

What we need is in the tiniest proportion to what we actually get and even can hope realistically.

Try as hard as we can.

Human endeavour is barely sufficient enough to wet the vast, muddy, cracked bottom of this big pond.

So we grope for illusionary faucets, if you see it.

The faucets of faith.

They serve a nice purpose.

They give the sense of the pond of needs, desires, necessities, luxuries and victory being filled up.

The perception of powers.

Many a time, we find ourselves cheated in our faith in this faucet.

Still, we revert back to get another one.