My daughter (at age 5) would get up in the morning and say ‘I smell tomato thokku’. Her faith was so strong, that tomato thokku would appear in our house in the next one hour.

Faith is the substance of things not felt, the evidence of things not seen. My daughter had faith.

Faith is perhaps the most confused word. Let’s explore what faith is not.

                     Five year old SagarikkaFaith is not entrusting your responsibility to someone else with the false hope that they would guide you to the land of your dreams.

When the 19 hijackers hit the Pentagon & Twin Towers, they had the faith that in the very next moment they would be in the Garden of Eden drinking the purest wine and surrounded by a harem of virgins.

Is that faith, where your neural circuits are distorted by some convoluted images of reality, believing which we get into a hallucinogenic state that would have disastrous consequences?

Faith is not the Jonestown massacre. The story goes thus, Reverend Jones was a preacher. He had a cult following at Jonestown, Guyana. One fine day, this healer had heavenly visions beckoning him and his jungle cult followers to heaven. 900 of them drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide with the faith of reaching heaven.

Faith is not there. It is here, in the now. The Jonestown followers and the 9 / 11 hijackers believed that heaven was an out of body experience. Your body is the instrument to experience heaven. The blind followers didn’t realize that your body is the space ship to reach yonder.

Faith is not the tool that colonialists used to destroy civilization. Faith is not the decimation of Red Indians, Aztecs, Incas or the enslaving of the Dark Continent.

Faith is not the internecine quarrels in Palestine or the Hutsi-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

Given a choice between this faith & love, I would choose love.

Love discriminates between good & evil; period.

Love follows the Golden rule; do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Love follows the silver rule; don’t do unto others as your won’t want them do unto you.

Love follows the Kantian principle; treat everyone as an end in themselves.

Millions of Indians lead wretched lives. I have seen hundreds of Dharavians sleep beside the open drainage without a care in Mumbai. Trichy is not far behind. Malai Vasal, Palakkarai, Gandhi Market, Gujili Street, the words evocate a nauseating response. Filth is ubiquitous but people have learnt to enjoy it.

The reason for this ludicrous behavior is hope.

Hope that God would transcend the heavens and shower blessings on this naïve devotee.

My maid claims (hopes) that God will not bring Corona down on her as she is good.

Hope is for beggars. Hope is for people who shirk responsibility. India has lived in hope & continues living in hope while the Gods are still busy settling matters in develoka.

I have not posed a challenge in this blog.

I wanted to clarify what faith is not, what love is and what hope is.

In the next blog; I wish to delve upon what faith is.

My pen comes to rest for today.