YOUR GOD, MY GOD

Faith. It moves people in mysterious ways.
A surrendered Kashmiri militant says he crossed over the border in his 20s, driven by his faith. Faith, like a drug in his veins, penetrating bone and marrow and heart. While his gods wept, the twenty-two-year-old took aim. The gun became his confidante, his prayer wheel, his rosary.

He remembers the first man he killed, the blood on his chest, the last breath ebbing out of his crumpled body. He taught himself to not feel the pain of the dying. To numb his ears to their cries. He believed the blood he spilt was a votive offering to a greater cause. A sacrifice at its exalted altar.

Gun cradled on his shoulder, he travelled from village to village under cover of the night. Hid in orchards, camped in jungles. Ate what he could lay his hands on, his reflexes agile, his nerves on edge, always on the run like a hunted animal. "It wasn't faith in my god or religion that made me sound the first war cry," he says. "It was the mad rush of youth, blind to consequences…"

This he says in retrospect, his weather-beaten face pressed against the cold iron bars of his prison cell. He surrendered five years after the bloodbath began. The stench of gunpowder clogging his nostrils, the gun on his shoulder growing heavier with each passing day. He saw the bodies piling up. But the situation on the ground had nose-dived into utter despair. He had mistaken the gun for a miracle, a magic wand he could wave and turn things around in the blink of an eye. Even if it was too late, he saw the path of the gun for what it was: a curse, a disease, a perversion of faith. He regretted his mistake.

Diving deep into the pool of that regret, he surfaced with the true tenets of his faith. "I put my faith in the might of the gun. Not the power of peace and tolerance that my faith preaches. I thought I was a believer but I was just a fanatic."

Misplaced faith that drives you to the edge. Turns you from a living, breathing being into robotic killer. Makes you strap a bomb on to your body and walk into a crowded market place. One push of a button, one flick of your finger, lives blown to smithereens. A suicide bomber programmed to dream of a perfect afterlife, a place in paradise, by those who pervert the very foundation of faith.

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Faith that saves you from the deepest abyss.

A Tibetan monk in Dharamsala, string of prayer beads in hand, maroon and yellow robes fluttering in the wind like a prayer. He takes a deep breath and breaks into a calm, knowing smile when he speaks of faith.

"Faith is …" he gestures at the hills covered with tall pines, the clear blue summer sky, the prayer flags dancing in the evening breeze. "Like air, water. It comes naturally to me. Like breathing."

To the Tibetan people scattered across the world, uprooted from their homeland, faith is the beacon that lights up the long night. A kind, benign, forgiving faith. Praying for peace and hope for all sentient beings.

For the exile, faith is the home where the heart is.

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Faith in a cause, even when the odds are stacked sky high. People brought together by nothing but the strength of their belief, inspired to take up impossible fights. One man and his faith in non-violence taking on the might of an arrogant empire. One nation's faith in freedom forcing the sun to set on an empire whose armies bullied the entire globe.

Faith moving mountains, birthing history at midnight.

Faith in the power of the powerless. Moving people to fight for dying lakes and rivers, tribals robbed of forests, miners left to rot in the bowels of the earth, farmers bulldozed into parting with their land. Win or lose, faith keeps you on an even keel. It's the fuel that feeds the fire and keeps it burning, even on nights when your tired eyes droop, and victory like a shimmering dream, seems way out of your reach.

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Then there are those who twist faith into shapes that suit their convenience. Misuse it like a terrible weapon of mass destruction.

"God asked me to send my army to Iraq," famously declared the American president. As cluster bombs rain on Iraq and corpses pile up, Jesus weeps…

Closer home, the saffron brigade sets fire to theatres which screen films they think can upset Hindu gods. Rip apart canvases which portray Lakshmi or Saraswati through an artist's eye.

"My way or the highway" says the cowboy brigade that runs the free world.

"Our way or the highway" screeches the saffron brigade.

Taliban hordes smash centuries-old Bamiyan Budhhas in the name of faith. The Buddha smiles as their axes take wild swings at the statues.

*******

For those who have said goodbye to the binds of organized religion, faith is a constant search. We seek, we find, we falter.

A friend woke me up this morning. The shrill ring of the cell phone rudely penetrated the mist of sleep. I cursed him generously in the grey light of dawn for destroying my well-earned rest.

"It's five in the morning for us mortals. Call me after… say…eight?"

"No I need to talk," his voice sounded odd, eerily disjointed.

"Ok…talk."

"Do you think there is a god?"

My patience levels are at an all-time low before sunrise. "Whose number did you dial? Nietzsche?"

But sarcasm simply bounced off the seeker. He carried on.

"I am serious. What the hell is one supposed to believe in these days? The world is going to pieces. Iraq , Iran, Kashmir, the north east, Israel, Palestine…"

"So there is war everywhere. There have been wars since ever. There's no hope for us except to believe in the possibility of peace."

Silence for a long second. Then his reply.

"Keep the faith? That's such a romantic idea."

Scoff. Scoff. At the voice of reason he dragged out of bed!

"Ok, so what do you suggest? Let's all turn into insomniacs, nihilists. Stay up all night believing in nothing?"

"No. I mean, I don't know. That's why I called. If I knew, would I call?"

"Brilliant deduction, my dear Watson," I muttered.

"If there is a god, how can he or she not intervene? Stop all this madness. Set it right?"

"May be we are supposed to do it ourselves. Since we started the fire. Our job to put it out?"

"No divine intervention? No miracles? Then how the hell are we supposed to believe at all?"

The sun is spreading like a blob of white paint on the horizon. Back-lit clouds glow in its splendor.

"Faith is a mystery. Nobody can explain it. Not me, of all people." I rest my case.

"So you don't believe in god?"

"What is this? The Spanish inquisition?"

My friend is a bloodhound in human form. I suspect he was trained at his mother's knee to track answers down.

"Do you?"

"Oh…there are days I do. And then there are days…"

"So what do you believe in? I mean, no matter what day it is."

"Possibilities I guess…" A sunbeam streamed in through the living room window, motes of dust caught in its way, did a jig or two.

"The promise of tomorrow. That no matter how dark the night, there is always the hope of a new day."

The sun slowly grew into a shiny, sparkling, golden globe. The sky was bright and clean, gleaming like a freshly polished floor.

A new day at our feet, unraveling before us like a grand red carpet.

A new dawn, a new dream.

Amen.