When You Can Walk On Water, Take The Boat John Harricharan

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streets were paved with gold and the houses and temples
gloriously reflected the rays of the morning sun. Juan
Martinez lived for many years among the natives of this
land, eventually escaping one day to tell his story.
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John Harricharan
One who heard the story of El Dorado was Sir Walter
Raleigh, friend and confidant of Elizabeth the First of
England. Many expeditions were made to the area on the
northern coast of South America called Guyana. It was
there that Sir Walter Raleigh and others believed the fabled
city of gold would be found.
In the search for El Dorado many lives were lost. In the
dense jungles of Guyana could be found bushes of Yellow
Allamanda and Red Amaryllis. There was also the waxen
petalled Cereus that blooms at midnight once in seven years,
then fades away with the rising sun. But a land of wealth
and ease or a golden city could not be found. For many
centuries the fight for Guyana continued until, in the end,
the country became a part of the British Empire.
In the meantime, the little boy Mahn Singh, who had
spent much time at the court of the Maharajah Jai Singh
the Second, had become an old man. His last days were
spent much like his earlier days, telling stories of dis-
tant lands, this time to his grandchildren and great-grand-
children. One great-grandson especially delighted in
asking questions of the elderly Mahn Singh. Though still
young in age, Jung Bahadur Singh would question Mahn
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When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat
Singh for hours about foreign lands and different peoples.
The younger Singh also learned about the heroes of the
Ramayana as well as the countries of the West where
many adventures awaited the brave and restless ones
who would dare to journey beyond the land of their birth.
Jung Bahadur Singh was in his twenties when he heard
that some of his people were traveling across the ocean to
work on the sugar plantations in a remote land known as
Guyana. Jung Bahadur Singh, great grandson of Mahn
Singh, took up the call and together with several other
stalwart young men, shipped off to the only British colony
in South America.
If conditions in India were difficult, conditions in
Guyana seemed almost impossible. From early morn to
late at night, Jung Bahadur Singh worked in the fields. He
raised his family as best he could. Battling the encroach-
ing jungles on one hand and the restless sea on the other
in order to save his little farm, he persisted and struggled
until the day he died. But the son of Jung Bahadur Singh
grew up in the little village by the ocean and remembered
the tales of the land from whence his father came.
The village grew and prospered and in time, the son of
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John Harricharan
Jung Bahadur Singh named Harricharan Nian Singh,
planted his own crops and tended his own sheep and
cattle. The tides of time rolled on and eventually a son
was born to him. Nian Singh spent much time with his
son, who later in a radical departure from Hindu tradition,
would be called John. He taught him the ways of the West
and the wisdom of the East, believing that a blend of both
would be better than either one alone. Like his forefathers
before him, Nian Singh worked the fields and farms so that
he could afford to educate his son in the better schools of
the time. Much was learned by John and one day, like his
grandfather, he left the land of his birth and traveled to a
new land The United States of America.
Strange is the pattern that the Weaver creates as strands
of time and space are woven together. Ever since I first
came to these shores, I ve used a blend of Eastern and
Western philosophies that served me well, except for the
last few years or, perhaps I should say, in spite of the last
few years. When I first met Gideon, my career and financial
stability were being tested. I witnessed things that I had
spent a lifetime building, slowly crumble. Even meeting
God in the Big City had not prepared me for what was to
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When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat
follow. And what followed was absolutely devastating.
Gideon was far from my mind when my car was repossessed.
God seemed very distant as creditors hounded me daily.
All I had come to believe seemed to be disintegrating.
Anger, frustration, fear and unhappiness filled me to over-
flowing. Friends disappeared, leaving me to believe they
were never friends in the first place. The two or three
remaining ones helped as much as they could. Even broth-
ers and sisters raised their voices in anger and disgust
because of my inability to repay debts owed them. As
time passed, I was quickly turning into an outcast. I
remember vividly how, in the middle of one winter, my
wife and children huddled over a small electric heater
because the oil company had turned off our oil supply.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I pleaded, to no avail, with
the telephone company not to cut off our service. Where
was Gideon in the midst of all this?
The questions weren t new and have been asked by thou-
sands of unfortunate people for centuries. Why must I suf-
fer so much? And if I had to suffer, why did my family and
friends have to endure with me? All I had tried to do was to
earn a decent living while treating my employees and others
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John Harricharan
fairly. I had tried to live by the old injunction to do justly,
love mercy and walk humbly with God. But in spite of my
efforts it came crashing down and fast. After the loss of
the company, the comfort and security we had known as a
family vanished as mist before the morning sun.
We lost our home and most of our possessions. We
sold a few remaining pieces of furniture in order to buy
groceries. One of the most difficult sacrifices I was forced
to make was to give away Rajah. It was he who had sat
beside me as I conversed with Gideon. Overwhelmed and
despondent, I began questioning everything I held sacred.
The question was not Where was Gideon?, but Where
was God? Eventually we moved to another state in a
desperate effort to start over.
And then, as a final blow, my father, descendant of
Mahn Singh of Bharat, passed away. Many were the sor-
rowful moments I spent alone but, even so, a new under-
standing was dawning. On quiet evenings as I drove home
from work I could still hear his voice in my head.
While commuting one evening, I was thinking how [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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