The following is a conversation I had with a fellow traveler in the train on my way back from Kerala after the vocation camps last June 2011. The language and the interpretation are mine.
He observed the fact of the other passengers getting down in different stops for buying something to eat. He then quipped – who is God? Whatever you say about God, finally it comes down to this – “Khaana.” It refreshes you, makes you alive and produces the vital energies enough for you to move around.
I asked, “Is it so? God is not “Khaana.” It is said that a bowl of food is God for a beggar. But God is the One who provides.
He agreed. But he meant to say something else while saying what he said. He meant to say that our hunger for God is as strong as the desire of our hunger to be satiated, ever more than this physical hunger.
I asked him, “Can you see God in this life, since you speak of God metaphorically?” I said that no one can see God. But he had a different answer – God comes in different forms – may be in the form of a needy girl, a beggar, an old man, a child and so on. If God comes, He comes; you cannot see him for the second time. Then he narrated to me a real incident in his life:
It seems that he was on his way back home after work by his own bicycle. The bicycle was loaded with firewood behind. He was tired. And as he was passing to a narrow path besides which there was a deep open well, he lost the balance and fell in the water. The bicycle fell on him and his leg was trapped in the bicycle. He thought he would die. No one seemed to pass through that way and a help was almost an impossible thing. He then at the point of death, wished to see his dear children. Suddenly, he says, there appeared a man, black in complexion, jumped in the water and lifted him out of the water. As soon as he saved me from the water, he went on his way without even uttering a word. He wanted to ask his details and even thank him for what he has done. Just few seconds and a glance of him, he was gone.
He also stated that God is One. He was a devout Hindu. He did say that we need to search for God, and our search is never ending and live always in expectation of a theophany.
I couldn’t get into further discussion since my language was limited.
