As a preparation to narrate the story I am interested in relating, I have to briefly summarise that I was a lukewarm believer in God in my childhood days and that I was not raised with too much of a religious background. I viewed the religious festivals that my family used to observe when I was a kid as a happy break from the routine (the schools would thankfully be closed during those days) and as an opportunity to eat delicious dishes that were specially cooked only on those days. My favorite festivals were the Ganapathi festival when we would go around the whole neighborhood raiding houses to see the decorations of the god Ganapathi that people had done, and also for the eatables that they would distribute. Then there was the Dussera which again was a festival of displaying dolls of various kinds - some of which were even imported, and then of course the Divali - the grand festival of lights and firecrackers. My view of these festivals were hardly devotional, and was one of pure enjoyment.
Since my prayers were largely unanswered (I would pray quite intensely that I do well in studies) and due to the consequent stress that I had to go through, I started developing an incipient doubt whether God did really exist. Later, as I left my home at Bangalore to pursue my studies at Delhi, the readings that I did (authors like Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre, and other authors with Marxist leanings) removed any traces of doubt that God did not exist. Most of my friends were also atheists.
It was in 1983 that I faced a period of intense trauma, stress and anxiety that led to a rather precarious health condition. Under such circumstances, in 1984, I was given a field assignment with a devout believer in God. I used to have elaborate discussions with him and all the time I used to be a champion of the methods of science and of rationalism. I would disparage all things held sacred by him, and even disparage things sacred to my own religion. As I spent more and more time with him, I happened to notice a series of remarkable coincidences that were rather striking to my understanding. Over a period of time these coincidences became so prominent that I started feeling he had some divine power. But the fact is that he was innocent of any wilful manifestation of those coincidences and that is when I came to suspect things of an occult nature that are not always observable to all. But on returning to Bangalore from the field, I again returned to my rationalistic methods. However, by this time I was not too sure.
(To be continued ...)
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