Sometimes God Speaks with a Female Voice in Hindi

Rachel T.

Does God speak to you in different ways?  Our brother Johnny shares a captivating story of how he encountered God unexpectedly at a desperate moment while he was traveling in India.

I remember standing in the New Delhi Airport wondering how I was going to get home. Sick, tired, and out of money, I’d gotten to the airport by the skin of my teeth. By that I mean a very bad case of diarrhea on a seventy two hour, third class train ride from Goa. I stood there looking at the ticketing clerk with the best puppy dog eyes my haggard self could muster. She just looked me at me like, “Yes, I’m waiting for the three thousand seven hundred rupees.”

A “new” airport tax that came out to about one hundred and fifty US dollars was getting in the way of me getting back to New York. If I had it, I gladly would have given it to her. I had no credit card at the time as I was a young dude of twenty seven who wanted to rough it in India. Traveling through the birthplace of yoga with just a backpack, one self help book, and a journal (oh yeah, five underwears) seemed romantic. And if there was ever a time in my life I wanted to be perceived as such, it was then.

Funnily enough, I had given the amount I needed to some people in Kashmir a month earlier. I couldn’t help but berate myself for doing so in light of my current situation. I thought, “That’s what you get for trying to live out this narrative of “Give unto others and it shall be added unto you.” I cursed myself for being so naive. “That doesn’t work in the real world!” I protested.

I think I was muttering to myself something about..bull crap Indian airport taxes as I dragged myself away from the counter, to a corner of the squalid airport. “This spot looks suitable enough to die in.” I half jokingly thought to myself. Unless by some miraculous turn of events, I would find a stranger in one of the poorest cities in the world to just give me three thousand seven hundred rupees.

Well, that’s when something completely..inconceivable happened.

The funny thing that happened on the way to that squalid corner I mentioned is this:  A lady came up to me and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your situation at the counter. I think I can help you.”

What the ..? I COULD NOT BELIEVE what was happening. We proceeded to walk back to the counter together. She got the attention of the lady clerk who’d helped me earlier. I couldn’t understand what was being said exactly, as it was in Hindi, but whatever she was saying, it sounded to me like the voice of God. She proceeded to take out three thousand seven hundred rupees from her purse and pay for my “new” airport tax. And she did it in the quietest way. No one around us even noticed. Of course, they did when I dropped to my knees, praised God, and hugged her sari wrapped legs with so much gratitude that I think I might have bruised her thighs.

Cut to me sitting in my seat  as the airplane is accelerating on the tarmac. As we became airborne, I couldn’t help but feel God’s presence. Once again, as I was in a ridiculously desperate situation, God was telling me loud and clear, “Yo J, you think I’m real now?” I couldn’t help but laugh and cry, all at the same time. Tears because,God is good.  And laughter because sometimes, God’s goodness is revealed in ways I wouldn’t expect.

Image Credit: Flickr/Boskizzi

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