The Day Faith Left Me: V S Achuthanandan’s Memoir

It was the day V S Achuthanandan turned 92. Someone who was with him gently asked, “How did you lose your faith in God?”

He leaned back in his chair, fell into thought for a moment, and then began speaking in a soft voice.

“We were a happy family my father, mother, and siblings. Then my mother contracted smallpox. Back then, anyone who caught the disease would be isolated in a makeshift hut built of palm leaves in a deserted area. Someone might leave food, water, or medicine near the hut, but the patient was left alone. You could often hear their cries of pain from afar. If they died, the body would be burned where it lay.

My mother too was shut away in such a hut in the fields. I was very young then. When I insisted on seeing her, my father would take me to the edge of the field and point to the distant leaf hut, saying, ‘She’s inside that.’ I could see only the hut. Perhaps my mother could see us through the gaps in the palm leaves.”

He paused, silent for a moment. Then he continued:

“After a while, I would walk back with my father, not understanding much. All I knew was to cry and pray that my mother would recover. And then, sometime later, I was told she was gone.

My father became our only support. He never let us feel the absence of our mother. But then he too fell ill with fever. I lay curled up at night, unable to sleep, trembling with fear, praying to every god I knew to let him live, just let my father come back to us.

But he too left, leaving behind only us children. That was when I decided, gods who don’t answer such prayers need not be called again.”