“From Banaras queues to colonial waterfalls, one traveller discovers that faith is as much about VIP passes and lost mobiles as it is about the divine.”
By Rajshekhar Pant
Faith is a curious thing. It wounds easily these days—one careless jab and it flares up, making us impulsive, reactive, even militant. When bruised collectively, it can swell into public spectacle. But faith’s quirks run deeper. It doesn’t just reflect our loyalties—it moulds our behaviour, shapes our expectations, and defines our aspirations.
And reason? Reason rarely rules faith. If it did, life would flatten into chemistry and arithmetic: zinc in sulphuric acid will always make zinc sulphate and water, never black salt or beer. Two plus two will never—despite all poetic licence—be five. Life, thankfully, refuses to be so obedient.
For me, preparing mentally for any journey is a crooked little exercise. Yet travel is necessary. Journeys generate experiences, which in turn generate thoughts and reactions—an essential process if one hopes to live a fuller life. Banaras called, for the wedding of a close family member’s son. Faith had been tugging at my mind lately, and the journey only added fresh tinder.
Just outside Haldwani, the foothill town on way, a scooter with two elderly ladies stopped dead in front of us. Our driver braked hard. Their fault, entirely. Yet, they scolded him as if he’d committed treason. He stayed quiet, then chuckled to me, “See, sir, I’m the one getting told off for nothing. That’s life—taking blame without cause.”
Maybe it was his personal faith in life’s dignity that let him absorb the insult. I began to think—faith is rarely born of verified truth. We never press our palms against burning coals because we know, beyond doubt, we’ll be burnt. But believing that an offering to the sacred fire reaches some higher power—that is faith. It isn’t always about cosmic truths—it’s about what we’re willing to accept without proof.
In Banaras, not visiting Baba Vishwanath would be sacrilege. The queue was daunting, so I sought the VIP shortcut. A few privileges later, I was touching the Deity, bowing low, and receiving blessings from the priest. Spiritually satisfying? Yes. Morally spotless? Debatable. Faith, I realised, can justify contradictions—just as one can ride a pitiful pony to Kedarnath and still bow in the temple without guilt.
In the temple’s corridor, I spotted a man in thick glasses in the routine line of devotees. He kept shoving a cloth bag behind his shoulder, one hand gripping his young son’s wrist. His thick glasses slid down his nose, and he kept pushing them back up with a twitch. His face shouted, “What a trap I’ve walked into!” Minutes later, he abandoned the queue, dragged the boy around the temple once, offered folded hands to the surrounding shrines in quick rotation, and plonked himself on the floor. His wife was likely in the women’s line. His faith in her faith was absolute—her blessings were, by default, his too. While I tipped the contact for arranging the VIP darshan, my eyes were riveted on that person. Compared to his quiet confidence, my opportunistic and springy faith seemed rather short of breath.
A boat ride along the Ganga unfolded Banaras’s ghats like an ancient manuscript, and sailing along them is like retrogressing in the corridor of time. The trilogy of birth, life and death merges here in a single continuum. One can always see here an ancient and unquestionable faith bending before the law of creation. Mark Twain had called the city older than history, tradition, and legend—by twice as much.
Sarnath, by contrast, felt like faith in a slower gear. Here, the solemnity of the Dhamekh Stupa marked the place where the Buddha first set in motion his wheel of Dharma. This seemed less like inspiration and more like the careful imposition of belief—his own enlightenment distilled into faith for his first five disciples. Buddhist faith, suspended between death and nirvana, felt—at least to me—like a subtle retreat from life. And yes, disillusionment does have its own peculiar charm.
The next morning, a festive day it was, we headed to the Vindhyavasini temple. It was overcrowded. A professional priest secured me special entry. Somewhere between faith and convenience, morality slipped quietly overboard. Bending under a steel railing for a shortcut, I lost my mobile phone in the press of people—something I realised only outside the temple. The odds of finding it were nil, but when I returned to the entrance, a policewoman politely informed me it had been recovered. Within five minutes, I had it back. Enough, surely, to sharpen my faith’s focus. Clearly, Maa’s grace had granted both the quick darshan and the miraculous phone recovery.
On the way back from Vindhyachal, a turnoff led to Wyndham Falls. Percy Wyndham—after whom the place is named—was Commissioner of Kumaon in the early 1900s. A bachelor, an obsessive hunter, and a friend of Jim Corbett, Wyndham built his administration on the caste prejudices of his time. How such a man discovered and cherished this serene spot near Mirzapur is a mystery—unless we accept that his faith in the British Empire was matched by some deeper emotional chord that the place struck in him. It is a reminder that faith—often beyond reason—can shape behaviour but also prevent us from looking honestly into our own souls.
Perhaps faith is simply being certain of what we hope for, even without seeing it. There are certain illusions that we don’t ever want to get destroyed. Freud was right in saying that life is a wishful illusion together with a disapproval reality.
Wyndham must have believed the British Empire would never fall. When I unexpectedly got my mobile back, I too thought, “How merciful the Mother is!”
(The author is an amateur filmmaker, a photographer, and a writer, who has written over a thousand write-ups, reports, etc., published in the leading newspapers and magazines of the country. He can be reached at pant.rajshekhar@gmail.com)
