Miracles

There’s an age, somewhere between one’s third birthday and the first day of fourth grade, during which a child believes in magic. Everything and anything is possible. When I was very young, little houses built in the backyard out of twigs, with moss for carpeting and bits of bark for furniture, housed real fairies, who came every night to eat the Rice Krispies I’d left for them in acorn shell bowls. My father’s glance into my closet was enough to kill any monsters living within. I had no doubt that magic was happening all around me.

So when my mother taught me the concept of Direction of Energy when I was four, I readily accepted it as the best sort of medicine there was. Direction of Energy involved feeling the energy field around someone’s body, and then pulling negative energy out of them, while guiding in positive energy. If someone told me about Direction of Energy now, I would smile and think how crazy they sounded. But since I was so young, it seemed perfectly normal. Sure¸ it was a little fantastical, but so were my fairy friends. Once mastering the art of Direction of Energy, I used it when my friends scraped their knees on the preschool playground.

“This will help you, don’t worry.”

They believed me, and usually it did help, if only because their minds told them it would.



Sitting in the Ramakrishna Mission House, I stared down at what Bushra had become. Once a joyous, beautiful five-year-old girl, she was now a writhing mess of pain. Her stained, ripped shirt hung raggedly from one shoulder. She maintained no feeling in any part of her body, and thrashed about so violently I was afraid she’d pull out the IV that had been crudely taped to her hand. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and her eyeballs themselves had rolled back in her head. Worst of all was her long, high pitched wail, coming and going from a too-widely opened mouth, signaling her immense physical suffering.

Manju ji, one of the heads of Guria, spoke quietly in the corner to Bushra’s distressed mother. She was so afraid to lose her youngest child, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to afford the treatment that possibly wouldn’t even be enough to save her life. Many doctors had seen Bushra and offered no help, saying that the girl was too far gone. Many hospitals wouldn’t take her in. At last, the Ramakrishna Mission House did, and yesterday afternoon, Bushra had gone into a coma. “With this kind of brain fever, she has a ten percent chance of survival,” the doctor told her mother.

Everyone had been thinking of Bushra. At the Guria center, we’d had two minutes of silence – punctuated by Bushra’s sister’s sobs – to pray for Bushra’s life, each child praying to God to bring their friend home safely. The prayers worked, Manju ji told Bushra’s mother. No one had really expected Bushra to come out of the coma.

“Chalo, Shaina,” said Manju ji. She came back and looked down sadly at the Bushra, who had at last worn herself out and had mercifully been able to fall asleep. “Let’s go. The doctor is too busy right now… I wanted to stay and speak with him, but we’ve been here too long.” She turned, and pressed a 1,000 rupee note into Bushra’s mother’s hand.

Too busy? I thought. God, somebody help this girl. I wish there were something I could do.
Suddenly, I realized there was something. “Manju ji, can we stay for a few more minutes?” I quickly tried to explain Direction of Energy to her. I’m not sure if it made the translation from English to Hindi in her mind, but she agreed to let me try.

I sat down on a wooden stool at the head of Bushra’s short, hard bed, placing my hands a few inches from the sides of the sleeping girl’s head. I closed my eyes and began to feel a familiar tingling of energy, the hot energy of her inflamed brain tissue growing stronger and stronger. It felt prickly and angry, and just when it was about to really hurt my hands, I began to work. I visualized a blue, cooling light emanating from my palms, massaging its way through Bushra’s burning head. It soothed us both, and a minute later, I felt calm. I opened my eyes, feeling the stares of all the women around me – Bushra’s mother, her grandmother, her nurse, Manju ji, even the other women sitting with their sick children in beds around us. But I kept a soft gaze on Bushra as I drew my hands slowly away from her head. In the same moment, Bushra opened her eyes. She yawned, and attempted to sit up. She was quiet, and her nurse helped her up. Her eyes no longer rolled, and she looked alert. I couldn’t believe it. Could I have helped, even a little bit?

Stunned, Manju ji touched my shoulder. “What – what was it that you did?” I explained again, and this time it seemed as though she understood. She said something in Hindi to the other women. The grandmother, old and toothless, began wiping tears from her eyes with the end of her sari, looking deep into me and bobbing her head side to side and up and down.

Soon the doctor walked in, and looked over Bushra, who began to quietly cry.

“She is still in very bad condition, but she is much better than she was yesterday,” he said.

Manju ji and I left the room silently.



Genevieve had told us that things were different here in Varanasi, that anything can happen in this holy city. But I haven’t really believed in miracles since childhood. Walking out of that hospital, I realized, India has made me believe in magic again.