There's a wonderful dialogue in the movie Premonition starring Sandra Bullock. `What is faith?" she asks the parish priest. "It is something that you cannot touch or see or even feel yet you believe in. Like love and hope."
Earlier in the day my interaction with the househelp left me with some nagging questions. A widowed muslim woman with three children, she's been forced to vacate her house and move into a new one. She wasn't too happy about it. Is the neighborhood bad and unfriendly, I asked her.
She said, it's not that it's just I don't have any of my people living close by and she left me to imagine the rest of the sentence. I know she does not have many relatives so I asked her, what do you mean "your people". She looked uncomfortable. You know what I mean, she said.
Yes, I know what she meant. She meant there weren't other muslim families and that she was living in a predominantly hindu neighborhood. And here we are living in a peaceful, secular part of the country yet the woman was afraid.
I realised that this kind of mental and psychological segregation of people based on religion has been happening for quite some time now. Something that I cannot grapple with or understand much. I have grown up with people of different faiths. I studied in a Muslim college and have wonderful friends who are muslim by faith. There was no invisible segreation in school or college based on religion.
Yet, it's happening now all the time. A muslim woman who has never been harmed in her life, ever by a hindu is apprehensive about living in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood. A Hindu who has never had a faulty relationship with a muslim colleague or neighbor is unconsciously beginning to second guess the actions, words and deeds of his friend of a different faith. Children of different faith play together, but there is a simmering volcano beneath the surface.
I beleive only FAITH can show us the way. By faith I don't mean faith in religion. I mean faith as in love and hope.
To me, this image of a burkha clad woman symbolises so many different emotions that many feel today fear, doubt, confusion....and to me there is also an element of hope in this picture -which is what the future is all about -LOVE AND HOPE
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