“Just
because you can explain, it doesn’t mean it’s still not a miracle’
- Terry
Pratchett (Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE), Small Gods 1992
Several attempts have
been and are being made to explain what a Miracle is. So, what is a Miracle?
How does one define it? Has it got to be linked only to the divine?
It is believed that the
word ‘Miracle’ apparently took root in the Latin word ‘Mirari’ which means ‘to wonder’. A Miracle is an event that cannot
or may not be explained with natural or scientific laws or reasoning. Any act /
happening that is reported and which can cause wonder, because the incident was
something beyond the reach of human action or natural causes, is supposed to be
a Miracle.
It is when the
impossible happens. It is when there is no earthy reason for something
wonderful to have happened. It is when such an event might have been attributed
to a supernatural being – divine (mostly) or otherwise!
As I think I remember
to have mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, my first boss (1976 vintage) used
to have a small sticker plaque stuck onto his cabin door that said (the words I
remember perfectly) ‘We do the impossible immediately. The Miraculous takes a
little longer’
I always wondered - ‘Do
Miracles take place’? In fact, I should not have; as I found the answer more
than once, so far in my life – Yes, they do and how?
In 1971, we, in our
family, had encountered our seemingly first miracle (think it was on 4th
July). On that fateful day, my father went to a neighbouring house some seven
blocks away to pluck some fresh curry leaves, for preparing breakfast as our
stock of curry leaves in the house exhausted and we did not have a curry leaf
plant in our house, yet.
For company, my kid
sister, aged about a year and a half, accompanied him. It was almost pre-dawn
and I was still lolling in my bed. Apparently my father made my sister stop a
few paces behind him and attempted to pluck some tender curry leaves from the
plant. In the process, he came into contact with a metal wire, used to dry the washing,
which was passing through the plant. Somewhere
else, this metal line must have been contacting a live and leaking electric
cable as the moment he touched the wire, along with the raw curry leaves,
he was electrocuted.
The cabin with the main
switch was locked and the person nearest to my father could not trace the key.
So he started hollering around and a person in a farm nearby heard him. This
person in the farm, Mr. Mani, to whom we owe our deepest gratitude, for
eternity, had worked with some electrician once and had some basic idea of
rescuing an electrocuted person. He searched for and caught hold of a dry
wooden pole and rushed to my father’s location and hit him with the pole. This
entire process took some 12 to 13 minutes and it was a miracle that my father
survived the length of the ordeal and survived. Because, in India, the domestic
supply of electricity is always around 220-230 volts of AC power.
My father was released,
but by that time he was injured in his feet, and started bleeding in the foot.
Till my father was carried home by these people, we were blissfully unaware of
what happened. If the survival of my father was a miracle, that my kid sister
did not touch him while being electrocuted is what we consider a second
miracle.
Much later, one
morning, in 2006, I was leaving for my office and left my home with my laptop
bag in one hand and my lunch hamper in the other (the back packs for laptops
were not introduced yet, then, in India). I got into my car and slowly eased it
out, of my cellar parking lot, on a declining ramp into the street and drove
off on a pot-holed road.
About half a kilometer later or so, I suddenly realised that I am not having my mobile phone on the empty passenger seat where I normally keep it upon. I clearly remembered taking it from the desk in my home. I wondered how I had lost it, as the doors and windows for the car were locked and shut.
Clearly worried, I
turned back my car with great difficulty, in the crowded, office going traffic,
to return home and to check once again, there.
I was beginning even to
sweat. The cost of the mobile phone instrument was negligible - even today I
try to have an inexpensive, simple and functional mobile phone instrument – but
my fear was more for losing the contacts and the little but important data
stored into its tiny mind and memory.
I returned home and
again driving up on the now inclining ramp, parked my car in my lot, went up
and searched all over in my house. No, I could not find it there too! My wife
swore that she specifically saw me taking the mobile out, when leaving for
office, the first time.
Now more worried, but
having little else to do, I walked back to the car, all the time trying to
recollect every movement of mine, on my earlier trip out, in the morning. I
remembered that both my hands were occupied; one hand carrying the laptop bag
and ‘the mobile phone’ and the other, the lunch hamper. So then, what happened
to the mobile phone?
Only when I approached
the car, the second time that morning, I recollected that to free my fingers to
open the car door, I had kept the mobile phone on the roof top of my car and
casually looked there. And lo and presto, my mobile was there – where I had
kept it.
It was a great relief.
But then awe overtook me. Now I recollected the sequence. I had kept it there
and moved out on an incline, drove on pot-holed streets and maneuvered the car
in tight traffic to return home, drove again on the pot-holed street, then up
on the ramp, parked it in my lot unguarded and where it remained an easy target
for anybody to come and pick it up (no security guard in my house and no
compound wall or a fence to guard, either) and yet it was there where I had
kept it. It was not hooked or pasted. It just was lying there. This is no less
than a ‘Miracle’ for me!
Yes, a logical argument
that the mobile could have had magnetic properties and so it stuck resonates
well with me and is accepted. Just to disprove myself on the ‘Miracle’ feeling,
I did the same routine of keeping my mobile on the roof top of the car exactly
where I had kept it earlier on the day I had ‘lost and found’ it, for at least
two consecutive times, only to see my mobile fall off within a couple of feet
of the wheel rolling. No Magnet, no miracle again!
That day I was lucky
and the ‘Miraculous’ happened! If somebody insists that it was just a
coincidence, I have no qualms on it!
Sometime during
2007-2008, one morning, my daughter who came home from her university wanted to
call her grandparents (my parents) and called over phone very early in the
morning as both my parents are early risers. In fact my father always rises the
earliest.
On hearing the phone
ringing, my sister, the same kid sister who was with my dad in the first
instance was roused from her sleep and smelled something burning. Perturbed,
she called out to my mother and both of them saw my father sprawled onto the
burning gas stove with the right side of his face lying on the burning gas
stove and the top of his body burnt badly with boiling milk. Both of them
helped him to bed and got my kid brother and another sister who stays nearby,
to find out what happened. I stay a bit farther and so took time to reach.
Over sometime, my
father gained consciousness and told us amidst intolerable pain, that as always
he woke up early and put the milk to boil on the gas stove for brewing his
early morning coffee. As the milk was about to be taken off, he had a stroke and
he fell on the burning stove. He was earlier treated for Heart disease and Brain
Ischaemia by a double by-pass surgical procedure, but it appeared that on this
day he had suffered a stroke of Brain Ischaemia and fell on the burning stove.
If he was found any
later we would not know what would have happened. Again it was miraculous and
eventually, we found that he survived but this survival was the most painful
for him and to all of us who could see him suffer so much. He is a man of grit,
my dad sure is! He is still scarred of the various degrees of burning he
survived, with his right ear slightly disfigured.
These might be the
miracles that happened to us in our family. But day in and day out, all of us
would be encountering some miracle and I am sure that every one of us would
have an interesting story to tell. It is
like Albert Einstein said, ‘There are
only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The
other is as though everything is a miracle’
In 1975 ‘Hot Chocolate’
sang in the famous and popular song ‘You Sexy
Thing’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3fX2_bxEkg for the full song)
……Where
did you come from, angel?
How did you know I’d be the one?
How did you know I’d be the one?
Did
you know you’re everything I prayed for?
Did you know every night and day for?
……
I believe in miracles,
Where you from, you sexy thing? Sexy thing, you,
Where you from, you sexy thing? Sexy thing, you,
I believe in Miracles
It sure is a matter of
belief, and I do tend to believe that miracles can, after all, and do happen!
And as Paulo Coelho said in his blog; ‘At this very moment I am doing what I most
like, and that is the miracle that I try to work every day’ (http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2014/04/07/miracles-2/)
I agree! I believe in
Miracles!
Now, do you? You tell
me!
Till
then,
Krutagjnatalu
(Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam),
Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Thanks (English), Dhonyabaad (Bangla), Gracias (Spanish),
Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado
(Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic), Shukriya (Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon
(Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai) and Asante
(Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino)
Hemantha Kumar
Pamarthy
Chennai, India
