Religion for most people is a cinch. You wake up and adopt whichever religion your parents belong to and follow (or not follow) the rituals in that religion. But then things are a little different for me. My dad's a Manglorean Hindu and my Maa is a Malayalee Jacobite Syrian christian. I was born to this childhood where we went to the local Sai Baba Mandir (loved the prasad there) and also visited the Malad church for Good Friday.
As kids we never realized we were different. Part of this credit goes to living in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai. My group of friends belonged to every religion and language you can imagine. In fact I never even knew what caste was till I had to fill a scholarship exam form in the 4th Std.
My parents were most broad minded in allowing us to choose whichever religion we wanted to choose. Which also for many years served as an excuse to not visit either a temple/church. Being a son of god-fearing (in fact god - loving) parents meant that we prayed each night. Being the younger one I must say it was my sister who inspired me to pray each night. There were also the good parts of getting sweets for Diwali and a Christmas cake along with gifts from Santa Claus.
Mom and Dad had this amazing belief in the Wednesday Novena at the Mahim church. Dad comes from this very secular Hindu family. My grandfather (Father's father) was extremely religious with a zillion photographs of Gods and Godesses across India. As a kid I loved watching all those photos. My grandfather Appa (as we called him) would bring us Prasad from the local temple and even very enthusiastically wish my mother on every Christian holiday. I still remember Appa wishing Mummy Happy Good Friday to which maa used to politely smile and nod her head.
It was in my first year of Diploma that my gravitation towards the christian church became stronger. I caught this strange little tummy bug which could not be diagnosed. At that point I was all of 67 Kgs and quite skinny. The tummy bug caused spasms which were quite painful and were a pain considering the work load we had.
It was one day when the pain was unbearable that I suddenly decided to go to church. It was a monday morning and the local church (Our Lady of Remedy, Poinsar) was closed but the caretaker showed me the small little chapel. I went to the Chapel, knelt down and prayed. The next morning my doctor suddenly called up and said that some culture test had thrown up some strange virus. It took 14 injections of a very painful antibiotic which finally cured me but at the back of my mind I knew that it was God. I went to church for a few days more and then conveniently stopped going.
I probably would have continued in my ways if not for a freak cricketing accident which caused me blackouts in my right eye. It was a very long and painful investigation which revealed that I had a retinal detachement in my right eye, had lost part of my vision and had glaucoma to boot. The treatment was simple. A surgery called sceralal buckling which like the doctor said had a 50% chance to succeed.
This was the second time that I turned to god. I did not get the surgery done and quite miraculously most of my vision has returned. I still remember when after 3 years I went to the doctor who was quite amazed. My retina is still detached, I occasionally get Glaucoma attacks but my vision has improved and all without surgery.
And today as I was sitting in church, I suddenly realized how much god meant to me. Over the years, I have quite a few times stopped going to church for days on end (I still pray at night). But each time I am in doubt, despair or have some difficult decision to make I turn to god and each time he has helped me.
Over the past few months I have been trying to make my visits to church more frequent. It's been quite a few sundays that I have been religiously attending mass. Not so much for the service but for the few minutes after that when I kneel down and thank god for everything that he has done for me. The happiness, the joys, the support and the love. Thank you god for everything. Please make me worthy of all that you have given me.
Amen.
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