In god we trust

People say that religion has little to do with spirituality. I disagree. I believe that the kind of environment you are exposed to determines your outlook towards life and thus even spirituality.

I am an Indian. Not saying that out of patriotism, rather there is no other way to define myself. I belong to a religious minority, that is to say that I am a Christian. Not a Roman-Catholic ( or any other catholic for that matter ), not a protestant either thank you very much. No .... I belong to a small subset of individuals who refer to themselves as the Malankara Orthodox Christians. There are a lot of things that I can say about my sect including that we are the oldest church in the world but I will leave it to the more interested and relatively jobless among you to find out for yourselves. But there is one thing that should probably be said about us. All of us are Malayalee.

My family for the most part are devout Christians. My mother and sister doubly so. My father seems cold and aloof leaving my religious instruction to the other two but can be very emphatic about it in a way that I find is unique to those of his generation. And all this makes me feel terrible and very much out of place in my lack of faith in an all seeing and benevolent god.

When I was younger things were much simpler, god exists because my mother said he did. I prayed everyday after I brushed my teeth, comforted by the knowledge that I was safe because my god would keep me safe. I don't know when did I started to question it. Doubtless the onset began in my more turbulent teenage years at the time of every normal teenager's development of self loathing.

If I had to put a specific day for it I guess it would be 26th Dec 2001. My family had decided to go on a pilgrimage to Velankani. It would be fun despite the long hours in the tempo and the naturally terrible food on the way. We were to travel with 2 other families, friends to my parents, not that I cared ... I loved to see new places, something that has not changed so far. My father couldn't make it due to some business at the 11th hour but we decided to go on without him.

We had reached the place on the morning of the 26th. Every lodge near the church of St Marys was filled. It was the day after Christmas after all. Eventually we found a place nearly 5 km away from the beach. The rooms had attached kitchens, the idea being that once we have paid our respects to The Virgin we can buy fresh seafood from the beach and bring it back here to prepare it as we like .... The practice is a lot more common than you would think.

So at first light we made our way towards the beach, stopping at a seedy joint to have breakfast. Terrible food. The youngsters were enthusiastic about going to the beach as quickly as possible, prayer can wait. Thankfully my mother insisted on going to the church first because she had heard the service being conducted in Malayalam. Suppressing my unhappiness we moved towards the white church. I was a 'big boy' at the time so I went and stood on the mens side of the church along with an uncle and his son. Not understanding a word of the service I observed the world around me. Everyone looking toward the altar, eyes closed and opened, hands raised in supplication, praying .... And then it happened.

Boom.

A bomb right? It had to be a bomb. People looked around confused distracted from their deity. Someone screamed in Tamil and people started running out. The uncle and the cousin ran out to the right hand courtyard and went to the wall to look out at the street. People were running away from the beach. A thin sheet of water, blackened and disgusting flowed over the stones. "Who would bomb a sewage main?" I asked receiving no answer. On the other side was a cemetery that I could see through a gate, A woman walking against the incline, reaching the gate. The water surged a bit and swept her away. Laughter died in my throat. I wasn't afraid, I was in shock. I was pulled away from the wall by the uncle. He ran with me and his son towards the wall separating the main courtyard from the side. We found his wife there, screaming and in tears. We climbed over the wall and ran toward the ramps where the rest of our group waited for us amidst a sea of hysterical people. The ramps led to a first floor hall of worship, for now it was our ark.

And so we climbed, pushed in all directions but mostly up. As we gained altitude I could see the destruction that had been wrought in a few minutes. Walls of water were crashing over buildings, some of which broke. The vehicles became debris which slammed into more vehicles. Oddly enough the number of people I could see in the waters was lesser than expected, perhaps they were swept away initially? Towards the entrance of the church, the gate facing east I saw a couple struggling against the swift current. The man managed to reached safety with the help of a few people still near the gate. Hugging the gate he held on to the woman. I wanted him to succeed, I willed her to make it. There was another surge, the water going over her head. Her hand slipped off and she was swept away leaving the man behind, screaming his arm stretched out plaintively while the men behind the gate pulled him away. That was when all this became real to me. I don't think I will or should ever forget that moment.

Everyone's attention was focused at the gate at this point. If things felt hopeless that lady being swept off solidified the atmosphere. All this time they were praying, begging for deliverance. And it came. Everyone in my family swears to it, even the members of the other two families that came with us. Anyone who came with us would agree that what happened next was in fact a miracle.

The water seemed to have a mind of its own as it swelled in front of the gate, like some manga character charging up before an attack. The water surged forward, an unstop able force of nature ready to invade the courtyard of the building we were in refuge of ... and it didn't.

 You have to understand, the gate was not a solid heavy shield like thing, it was an old rusted mass of a few strips of metal soldered together. In every logical scenario the water should have passed through. Before our eyes the water came at the gate and as if by some invisible force pushed back with the same force it had come. The water did not breach the courtyard. Cries of “Praise the lord !!” filled the air and everyone moved into the prayer hall to pray and to give thanks to the divine protector. Me? I was still in shock. We hung around for a few more minutes and waited until the waters had calmed themselves. 

We left as soon as we could wading through 3 feet of water to get back to our un-flooded lodge and tempo. As it turns out we left before the second wave struck, otherwise we would have been stuck there for a while. I don't really remember the way back very well, I only remember an impression that the roads were much wider. On the way there the sides were lined with stalls and push carts loaded with cheap religious merchandise run by people of all ages. They were no where to be seen now. I remember my mother telling me to look forward only, not the sides. Later I found out that I was spared seeing the bodies of the dead lining the path, floating in the water. My sister was not so lucky. When we finally reached our lodge we found our distraught  driver looking for us. He didn't just leave us and run away as  most would have. We packed quickly and left eager to put all of this behind us but not before we were forced to pick up a large group of people under threat of harm from a mob. Thankfully all they wanted was safe passage to the town nearby which we provided. The driver didn't stop his head long gallop back to Bangalore until late in the night when the fatigue nearly made his drive off the road. 

We stopped at a highway hotel for dinner and watched the news. The magnitude of what had happened finally hit us. And we survived that! The sell phones where finally working again and we could call up my father to let him know that we were OK. I cant imagine what he had been through, his entire family may have been wiped off the face of the earth, the relief that he must have experienced when he found out that we  were alive. I wonder what he bargained for with god for our safety, what he may have promised for us to come back home.

 For all of my family this experience solidified their belief in God. For me it did the opposite. Watching the blood red moon on our way back to Bangalore I couldn't help but wonder what made me  or any of us so special that we were saved? What have we done that makes us so beloved to god?