People, Religion and Politics: The faithful cohorts

3.45 PM, sept 24, 2007

Thermodynamics Class

NIT Raipur

Dr Samir Bajpai of civil dept enters the mechanical first year class and asks

“who is supposed to engage You students”

“Tripati Sir” the class mumbled back. The tone of the reply showed the terror in the students mind, whenever I see him, the first thing which comes to my mind is Prof. Cherian of Five Point Someone.

The teacher takes up his slim Motorola set and dials someone, “######”

Sound was not audible but content was clear from his act, the Mr. Tripati just went out with his colleague to the canteen without realizing the fact that the students are eagerly waiting for him and his thermodynamics over the innocent children. (With due respect I would like to give respect and tell u the fact that Late Tripati sir is man of Honor to the students and he was a great asset to NIT Raipur. My salute and prayers for you sir, I can see your smile reading my words.)

Samir sir who is also the head of humanities section enquired about the English classes. Three months after the start of the semester I realized the fact that there is an English class for us. That sounded terrible to me and thought Tripati sirs refrigeration and Sanyal sirs Mechanics are better than the verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, superlative, transitive or the quantifiers.

Sir asked what was the topic of discussion was in the last class.

A student with striped full sleeve shirt, thick glasses jumped out from his seat to answer. I felt that he is a born waste, even after joining an engineering college jumping up and down like a child to answer questions.

Anyway the topic was religion and politics. The situation was an insult to injury, I expected the usual lecture on this stupid topic.

Thus he started with a question “Cite the most top rated controversial talks happening around.”

A shower of answer started coming, from the Gujarat violence, educational Policy of the government, Stability of Indian economy to the split of the Ambani brothers.

He smiled and said “ Think like a common person not like a professional, it’s obviously religion and politics.”

“My next question is why these problems are the most stalked part of the society “

There came another shower of answers, diversity, lack of unity, greediness etc.

“Not exactly, the answer again is simple; FAITH”

“Religion is faith in god and the latter is faith on the people. So again the question rises what precisely is faith………..”

Zzzzzzzz…….

Next thing I notice is my friends yelling at me, telling that the day is over. Wow I thought what a wonderful day.

But today standing here in my fourth year at the cliff edge, about to fall down I realize the relevance of the word FAITH. I lost faith in everything, my life, friends, and relations.

So I decided to start from where he stopped,

What precisely is faith?

The Oxford defines Faith as ‘Complete trust or confidence’. It sounds as an undemanding fundamental regulation of life thus it’s a convoluted saying that the faith drives the whole world. So I feel that the oxford definition is not complete, thus I started my journey to find the truth of life, to enlighten me, to bring me back to the right path.

To be contd…..