'You were never religious, were you?', W. says. Im a Hindu!, I tell him. 'But you were never really religious, were you?'
My Hinduism seems all too easy to W. It seems to bring me no anxiety. It fails to push me further. I don't struggle with faith, or with the idea of faith.
W.'s relation to religion is fraught, he says. It's a daily struggle. Sometimes he feels on the brink of a great conversion, to what he doesn't quite know. Sometimes he feels as far from religion as possible, and the word faith is ashes in his mouth. Faith! he says, what need have I for that?
Of course, he as born a Jew – he's Jewish through his mother's line, but his father's family were Catholic converts, and he was baptised. He went through a great religious phase, W. remembers, at the age of thirteen. He demanded to be taken to church! And he was taken. Thirteen!, W. says. That's when he was most pious, W. says. Most pure.
Since then, it's Jewish pathos he feels most strongly. The Messiah hasn't arrived, W. says. The Messiah's not a person at all. It's about time! The messianic is an epoch, W. says, though he doesn't expect me to understand that. The messianic is about politics, about society, he says, though he's sure I don't understand that, either.
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