Reading the news that a Christian nun from a Kerala village, Sister Alphonsa, who had died 62 years ago, was canonised as India’s first woman Saint by Pope Benedict XVI yesterday at St. Peter’s Square in the presence of 5,000 Indians and thousands of others, I could not but think of one particular miracle among many attributed to her. That miracle is the healing of a young boy’s clubfoot or twisted feet as some newspapers described it. The clubfoot is medically described as a congenital deformity of the foot with a misshapen appearance often like a club or stout. There is also another nun from India soon to be canonised to be a Saint who is already world famous Mother Theresa. It seems there was already one person from India, Saint Gundisalvus Garcia, who was crucified in Nagasaki, Japan and was later canonised as a Saint.

Certainly this will make devout Christians happy as they can seek succour and health - cure by praying to these new Saints. New churches may also come up bearing their names. It is said; only persons who are hailed for possessing miraculous powers are made Saints. Jesus Christ was believed to have possessed miraculous power and performed many miracles even while alive. The Bible says he had made the lame walk, lepers clean, blind see and brought the dead back to life “Lazarus, come forth”. However, when he was asked by the Satan to prove his divinity by turning stones into bread and to jump from the hill to be picked up by the angels, I think at Jericho, a place I was fortunate enough to visit, Jesus turned down the request saying, "Don’t tempt the Lord, Our God."

Be that as it may, as I was reading the news relating to Sr. Alphonsa, now Saint Alphonsa, for the last nearly 15 days and about a particular miracle of one boy by name Jinil Merin Shaji, also from Kerala, who got his clubfoot cured entirely and could walk like a normal person, I was reminded of the British novelist W. Somerset Maugham’s book, "Of Human Bondage".

The boy Jinil had told the press in Vatican City on Oct. 12 that he was born with a congenital defect in his ankle and as such could not walk. He said, "Having lost all hopes, when I was a one year old boy my parents had taken me on a first Friday of 1999 to the tomb of Alphonsamma (Sr. Alphonsa) at Bharanaganam. All the doctors had said that I had an incurable disorder. My parents laid me on the marble surface of the tomb of Alphonsamma and prayed relentlessly to cure my disability. I learnt from my mother that small changes were noticed in my feet within no time and all were amazed. By evening prayer time, I was almost back on my feet."

In the novel “Of Human Bondage”, the main character of the book Philip also suffered from a similar deformity, commonly known as clubfoot and was humiliated by a heartless teacher who mocked at him in front of the class as “clubfooted blockhead”. He was feeling miserable going to school with this deformity and was wondering how he could be cured of this handicap. This reminds me of Aamir Khan’s, “Taare Zameen Par” where the hero, child character, also suffers from a different kind of disability, Dyslexia and as a result had problem with class-teachers and classmates just like Philip in Of Human Bondage.

Being from a very religious, orthodox family, Philip came across the following words of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, "If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig - tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all this, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

Reading this, Philip thought that this could have a personal application too. If prayers could move mountains, then prayers could much easily remove the deformity of his clubfoot and make him walk like a normal person, he thought.

So Philip prays with all sincerity saying, "Oh, God, in Thy loving mercy and goodness, if it be Thy will, please make my foot all right on the night before I go back to school."

Philip was confident in the word of God. On the night before he was to go back to school, he went up to bed tremulous with excitement. One would indeed be touched reading the manner in which the author has described the feelings of the child and what he did in the bed not only while he prayed but also when he was to get up from the bed next morning, certain in his belief that the God had granted his prayers. He was shocked. He was disappointed.

At the breakfast table Philip was very quiet and his Aunt Louisa and Uncle William enquired about it. Philip asks his Uncle William, "Supposing you'd asked God to do something, and really believed it was going to happen, like moving a mountain, I mean, and you had faith, and it didn't happen, what it would mean?"

The response from his Aunt Louisa was, "What a funny boy you are!" and his Uncle William answered Philip’s question saying, "It could just mean that you hadn't got faith."

This was what Osho Rajneesh too was telling me and also to his innumerable interlocutors during his discourse at Pune. He was asking us for total surrender and unflinching faith without an iota of doubt.

Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him, it was because he did not really believe. And he did not see how he could believe more than he did. Just as it was when Osho Rajneesh asked me and others to believe in him totally.

Philip realises with a sense of dull resentment against his Uncle that the text which spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of those that said one thing and meant another. God Only Knows [GOK]. While I am happy with Jinil for his luck, my sympathies are with Philip. Amen!