Memoirs of a Laid-back Rebel

What you're going to read is an excerpt from a rather nice book I'm reading called "Bombay to Eternity" by Uma Ranganathan. In my mind, this (although I haven't finished reading the book yet) is the best passage from the book....

"How trusting can one afford to be in life? you invariably ask yourself, surrounded as you are by a world full of suspicion and betrayal. Until another question occurs to you and that is: can one afford to live without trust in this world? Words, you might be saying to yourself as you read this. Nothing but semantics. So, let's get to the bottom of the whole business and see whom or what it is we are supposed to trust and why.

Today, when I look at it, I see that trust has to do with something much larger than yourself or anybody you know. Trust, at its deepest, is what you feel towards an intelligence infinitely superior to your own and which you sense is guiding you from some spot you can't quite pinpoint. It is what you feel for the nebulous presence from which you emerged and which is - and always will be - more to you than any living person on earth. You feel it for the simple reason that you are - we all are - finally, children of that nameless cloud.

The sad thing is you don't recognize it anymore. You've switched your allegiance, as you grew up, from that which was true and eternal to something that will fade with time.

Trust. You lose it. Your connection with your true parent and with yourself dwindles, you fall out of the hallowed state, your mind starts closing its doors. Before you know it, you are no longer God the Baby wanting to experience the human side. You've been pulled over across a kind of fence in the mind to become 'one of them'. A Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim or a Jain. A bus driver, engineer, doctor, social worker. Your trust is now reserved for those who look like you, talk like you, think like you. You're finished. It's a long way back to where you came from."

It left me with an awkward lump in my throat.