FLIGHTS OF FAITH

I’ve known Patricia Ganguly since ninth grade - an attractive young girl with dancing eyes and a wild mop of hair. Now in her 30s, she’s a fierce career woman and still single. She’s been in relationships but consistently picked the wrong guy… Just too involved with her job to not take the guy on face value. If he looks right and talks right, maybe he is right, had been her dominant logic. But after each of these abusive relationships, it was a disturbing sight when this headstrong I-know-what-I-want-and-how to- get-it sort a woman would slump into a crumpled, battered and sobbing heap.

After her last, Patricia stayed away for a while. She missed some reunion dinners too, until one evening when she showed up looking decidedly radiant. She had a calmness about her that had replaced the whirlwind of hyper energy that used to surround her. All through the evening, Patricia, who in the past, couldn’t stop raving about her job and the tectonic shift s she was effecting at the workplace, was now quietly listening to the rest of us talk. There was something very wrong, or very right about her. We teased and pulled and coaxed but she just smiled and shook her head… We tried the guessing game… New guy? New boss? The new neighbour? New job? A raise? A pet? … She didn’t budge… But eventually, Patricia surrendered.

“I have found my guru”, she said. This was rather anti-climactic… No new guy? Just a guru… So who’s this guru, we asked… How do you know he isn’t a fraudster? “It’s not a ‘he’ but a ‘she’ and I know because she doesn’t claim to be a guru… She’s a Hindu and we’re Christians and yet she speaks of God and my faith as if she were Christian herself… She’s more than 50 years old but doesn’t look a day older than 35. Both she and her husband have been on the path of spirituality and healing for decades. And they never take money from people whose lives they’ve transformed. And when I say transformed, I mean it because people with debilitating diseases have been rescued from the pits of hell that their lives had become, through sheer faith… Look at me. I used to be an emotional wreck and yet today, I’m untouched by turmoil… I’m not needy anymore.”

She had a point. She did look and sound better and more balanced than she ever had. Over the weeks, she narrated amazing accounts of miracles that this husband- wife duo had selflessly performed for those who were in need. Eventually many of our friends started visiting this couple, seeking salvation, and solutions. The respect my friends had for the Vamans (that was the name the couple went by) was obvious. The Vamans never asked for anything and yet my friends were queuing up, volunteering service and funds for their charitable projects; some had removed Victoria Beckham or the Ferrari they had driven during their trip to Nice from their desktop and installed the Vamans there instead. Our reunions became a celebration of the wonderful world of the Vamans. Patricia and the others deified the Vamans and spoke of them with missionary zeal. Intrigued, I gave in… I would go too…

A week later, Patricia called. She whispered “maybe my phone’s being tapped… there’s trouble. The Vamans are weird folk… Tantriks! They’ve been using us…Can’t talk over the phone. Let’s talk over lunch tomorrow.”

Next day at the cafe, other friends had also arrived, and with some people I hadn’t met earlier – fellow disciples of the Vamans. They all had a story to tell. It wouldn’t be fair for me to reveal too much because all I heard was one side of the story, and since these are real people, it’d only be fair to both the Vamans and my friends, and you too dear reader, that I spare you the details… In brief, the Vamans apparently tried to seduce Patricia, who had by now become a part of the inner circle of devotees, into joining them in their ‘sexual experiments’. The other disciples in the inner circle were apparently already “in league with the Vamans”. Patricia was seething. Others had stories of minor financial irregularities; one had even been involved in intimidating a land grabber on behalf of the Vamans. When they all started talking about their experiences, gradually the oath of secrecy and their allegiance to the Vamans crumbled as they discovered that the Vamans had told each of them something unpleasant about the other… These ‘observations’ weren’t necessarily lies but might’ve been exaggerated and were a violation of the faith with which they had confided in the Vamans.

That strange evening, a god became the devil, on that table, and in our heads, within a matter of minutes… and we didn’t know what to think of them and of each other… What would you do when faith, borrowed faith, crumbles against insight, borrowed insight? If you have a suggestion, don’t hold back. Meanwhile, I’ll let you know what I make of the situation in a week’s time.

SUGAR TOWN II: IN BRUGES

There’s a magic portal on a narrow street that runs off a highway from Antwerp, many miles away… It was a grey and wet day, like all the others in Belgium that summer. As the car skated along the thin film of water, wading through the soft spray churned out by the wheels of a colossal 18 wheeler, I peered at fat drops of rain going pitter-patter on the pane. In the fields that lined the highway, I could see small herds of hornless cattle, marbled rumps and sirloin steaks on four legs, grazing in the haze. Further away, standing tall against horizon stood a row of wind turbines extending all along the highway. After driving west for nearly a 100 highway kilometres, I could see a little lane drifting away to my left . And that little lane tugs at every heart, promising seductive adventures and delicate delights, so I veer off the highway, ducking under a green sign and into that narrow lane that leads to a world from another time… incase you haven’t noticed, the sign says, ‘Welcome to Brugge!’ (that’s how the local Flemish folk spell it anyway… and the way they pronounce it is Broogah – the first bit like brew, as in tea, and the second syllable sounds like a man trying to cough up something he’s choking on...)

At that moment, as I was about to leave this dull grey lane and enter the portal to this magical and enchanting town, I was reminded of the words of a dark-haired damsel I’d met by a lake amidst the serene beauty of a paradise valley called Interlaken. She had been to “Bruges” (that’s how she and the rest of us pronounce it, rhyming with rouge, as in cosmetic) earlier and “it was simply the most beautiful and charming town in the world, preserved just the way it was in the medieval period… a living breathing city suspended in time between the middle ages and the 21st century”. That day I resolved to one day visit Bruges and see this town for myself…

And Bruges was definitely unique… The road along the lane transformed before our eyes into a cobbled path with clumps of grass growing on the fringes. The driver slowed down and parked by the kerb. Cars aren’t allowed in most parts of Bruges. We stepped out into the dull drizzle and walked round a corner and voila…! We’d left behind the rain and the gloom and entered a world where the sun, it would have you believe, always shone. Cobble-stone paths under our feet led us into a town square that looked like a movie set for a ‘King Arthur’ film. Medieval spires and towers shot up at the clear blue sky and in the centre was the town square with its assortment of true-blue Belgian stores, some selling chocolates in all shapes, flavours and sizes while others were devoted to displaying intricate patterns of Belgian lace… In any other setting, these stores would’ve smacked of kitschy commercialism, a fl y-trap for the bus loads of tourists that throng Bruges, come sun or snow, but here it only deepens the romance. Beyond the sloping roofs, stands the towering Belfort - Bruges’ bell tower, an 83 metre high structure that has stood there all alone for nearly a thousand years. I walked towards it, drawn by the whispers of stories that lie buried in its stony heart. What sights it must have seen as the years and heads rolled and kingdoms and the dust on them settled and swirled… But it’s not just the Belfort. All of Bruges is almost just as old… and to think that people live and go to work in these beautiful and ancient structures.

Suddenly I heard the clippity-clop of heavy iron shod feet. It was a horse-drawn carriage… I almost expected to see armoured knights with lances getting off the carriage but had to make do with the sight of an old German couple in the carriage, brandishing their Nikons as they hurtled along… Not perfect but beautiful nevertheless. Such horse-drawn carriages are a great way of moving about town. But the best things about Bruges are these beautiful winding canals that run across the lap of the city. In this Venice of the North, with its handsome willows, arched bridges and little boats reflected in the still green waters, you could spend days drifting from one picturesque corner to another. But a trip to Bruges is complete only with a visit to the magnificent spires of The Church of our Lady where hidden from the world behind ornate stained glass windows sits a gorgeous and ancient masterpiece, faithfully preserved and perfect, just like the town – Michelangelo’s magic in molten marble, the Madonna and Child…

Bruges seduces like no other city can for there is none that blends dramatic architecture with an all pervasive sense of history and an immediacy that allows you to touch the waters of the canal, the lace in the stores, the stones that speak and the history that lives in this town just as easily as the town touches your soul…

Here’s another one for your bucket list…