The God I almost met

"Sometimes in life you call out to a god out there you have never met or doesn't believe that exists, out of desperation rather than faith. This was one of those days."

It was our third year college tour to Karnataka. We visited Mysore and Bangalore, and the fourth days plan was to visit Shravanabelagola. It's a rock hill on top of which is a Jain temple, with a giant statue of Gomateswara. To get to the temple, we have to climb around 650 steps cut in the rock.

I was in charge of handling finance for the trip. I had one of those college bags that hung around the shoulder in which I kept the money, the accounts, and some of my personal stuff. It had around Rs. 50,000 when we started the climb. That was the remaining amount to be paid to the bus we hired, and the water theme park we were supposed to go the next day. As soon as we started the climb, me and Jisha started counting the steps. After a while, I gave up, and walked in front. About three quarters of the way up, there is a small temple of some lesser god. We took almost thirty five minutes to reach it. I walked into the complex tired and weary and sweating. The first thing I did was remove the bag off my shoulders and put it under a pillar inside. That was when Sherin and Shabna joined me, and we sat there to rest for a while. Somebody called for a group photo, and being the show-off I was, I jumped off the temple and ran into the frame. What I realized 2 hours later was that I didn't pick up the bag when I went to get my picture taken. We climbed again to the reach the main temple, and then came back all the way down the hill and went shopping.

I liked something in a shop which I thought I'd buy and reached out to my back pocket to take my wallet out when it struck me that the bag that should have been hanging on that side was missing. I cannot explain the feeling that ran through me at the exact moment. I was petrified, already thinking about the consequences. But in an instance, I recollected where I had kept it on top of the hill, and how I jumped off to get my picture clicked, and how I crossed that temple on my way back, and didn't realize that the bag with all our money was missing all this while. I ran out of the store, and told Rajeev about it. I told him I'm going up to find it and started running up the steps. Being the cool head he is, he replied saying he'd send Justin up behind me. Justin was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of my class, and he was the only one capable of climbing that hill twice in a day. Other than me of course. He had the muscles and the energy to do it. My ass was on fire.

I wasn't counting the steps this time. I couldn't think of them. The hot blaring sun right above my head, and my tight jeans were not helping me either. I was running with all my energy, climbing the 650 odd steps that led to the temple on top at an athletes pace. I think I clinched a national record to climb 600 steps when I reached the small temple complex in under 10 minutes. My head was spinning and my heart pounding when I ran into it. I looked under the pillar where I kept the bag, but it wasn't there. I didn't know what to do next. I thought I should run up all the way to the top of the hill, and stay there with Gomateswara all my life. I didn't know what I'll tell my friends if I went down without the money. Exhausted and deprived of my senses, I sat down in the middle of the temple. Justin reached the place by that time. I told him I couldn't find it where I'd kept it. He said he'll go all the way to the top and check out in the main temple as well, and continued his run. I was in deep shit, and I knew it. Sometimes in life you call out to a god out there you have never met or doesn't believe that exists, out of desperation rather than faith. This was one of those days.

That's when I heard somebody call me from inside the temple. I turned around and saw a person. He was sitting behind a table writing something. It was God. I was sure. He had a divine feel to the way he sat on the floor, the way he wrote on the paper and the way he called out to me. He asked me what I wanted. I told him the whole story. Then he asked me to describe the bag and its contents. When I told him everything, stuttering as I did, he took out a bag from a box, and showed it to me. It was my money bag. I was so happy to see it. He asked me to examine the contents, which I did, and confirmed that nothing was missing. The money, my walkman, some clothes and my cap. I was so relieved at that point. I thanked him with all my heart and told him that he saved my life, as I didn't know what to do if I couldn't find the bag. This was one of those moments for me when all the principles I had against the existence of God, all the debates I've had with my friends, all the books and articles I have read and all the fights I had with my mom for not going to the temple suddenly became obsolete and meaningless. It was very difficult to change a belief that has been instilled in my brain for years and accept a simple fact that negates the credibility of everything I accepted as true until then. My mind was still in conflict between God on one side, and my beliefs on the other as I got up to leave, when he asked me, "So you got your bag. Aren't you making any donation to the temple?". And that's when the divinity of that moment came to an end. I suddenly came back to my senses and realized that he was no God but a human after all. Even though I was taken aback from the things happening suddenly around me and inside my head, I was extremely happy that I got my bag back, and I picked a hundred rupee note from my pocket and gave it to him. He asked for more, which I humbly declined, and ran away from there.

On my climb down hill, I thought of how I almost screwed up the tour for my entire class with my carelessness and lack of responsibility. When I reached the bottom, I saw Rajeev and Kavitha, who were the only others apart from me and Justin who knew about this 'averted-tragedy' standing outside a restaurant. Everybody else were inside, having a wonderful lunch, with no idea that I almost lost the money to pay for that lunch, and their way back home. I told them about what happened on top of the hill, except the part where I almost saw and started believing in God.