For some years after meeting the bespectacled grape-eating finger-licking demigod, I became a devotedly religious child. I was a ‘somethingist’… or whatever that cult was called. For once in my life I felt a sense of serenity, knowing my life was secure, that though I walked alone on dark and foggy roads, a greater force would guide my way.
For a while then, the deep melancholy which stalked me from childhood was kept at bay. I found a community. Or rather it had found me. It sheltered me and loved me – on the sole condition of fidelity.
I learned to ‘meditate’, to recite magical chants and to pray. The mother never pushed me to read the Master’s Sacred texts, but I learned it anyway, though understanding very little. It didn’t matter. The Family had spent many solemn hours in study and meditation, so would I. The devotion of a child was absolute.
…
When I was around 10 years old, our family moved abroad. My memories of the subsequent years were too chaotic to follow. On one evening I lost my faith, as suddenly, tempestuously and monumentally as I had found it.
I’d rather not recount the event that transpired. It seems so trivial now, and it will be to my lifelong shame that I allowed something insignificant to affect my life so profoundly. Suffice to say that for a young child it was somewhat traumatic, and trapped in a foreign country, divided by oceans from another person who spoke my language, I turned to the only source of consolation – Faith.
That was years after my meeting with the Master. l still remembered a ‘spell’ the Mother recited to me – the Master was impressed with me and had dispensed his blessing, she said. Should you ever be in dire state, write the incantation on a piece of paper, burn it, recite the words three times, and all will be well
One night, in a moment of childish despair, I remembered the spell and conducted the ritual. Paper was burnt, incantations was recited. Ashes charred my fingers. I felt a veil being lifted, it left me cold, naked, and in its place was void.
That was the night my faith died.
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