Beyond procedures.

I want to talk about two main things. One about faith, and the other about belief.

This image is a miracle to me. I've always wanted to shoot an image similar to this- one that is balanced in emotions, from an event which is quite an emotional one. And I thought that I might get one or two rare opportunities on this day- Spectrum 2019, which was on April 28th. I wanted to show children from a heroic perspective. And this image, like other miracles, was totally unplanned. A couple of seconds before this image, I knew something was coming up real soon. So I tried to bend down to the ground as much as I could, but simply didn't have enough space to get the right perspective. So I just switched the focus to complete auto, kept it on the ground, and clicked the shutter. Once. This really taught me how narrow the line separating faith from belief really is. Faith and belief are both a kind of confidence. Your faith in God just tells that you're confident of a higher power taking care of things that are beyond your control, whereas your belief in a particular ideology tells that you're confident of that ideology being right. About that ideology being practical.

We believe in idologies like hard work, discipline, kindness, etc. We sense a connection with some of these ideologies. We often work with these ideologies to achieve many things in our life. Some of these are often taught to us. We are taught that hard work pays. We are taught that discipline maximises efficiency. But the modern mind doesn't really know what's faith. I'd like to paraphrase a quote that I read long back, which says that faith is what modern science doesn't consider. I think we need a balance between both.

Let me take the example of Capt. Sullenberger, the man who landed a US Airways Airbus A320 on the Hudson river on 15th Januray 2009. Sully was one of the most experienced pilots in US Airways at that time. But that particular day, he was faced with an unprecedented emergency- dual engine failure, something no pilot trained to handle at that time. Both the engines of the plane went through a bird strike, with 155 people on board. What he did next was a complete miracle. He landed the plane on the Hudson river. Now for those of you who aren't into aviation, landing a plane in water is an extremely difficult task. It is by far the most dangerous manoeuvres you can do, as it is simply unpredictable as to how the plane would bounce off the water level. Before that, several aircraft were catastrophically destroyed with fatalities reaching close to 100%, every single time. But Captain Sully pulled it off, with all 155 alive. Now that's why it's famously called the Miracle on the Hudson. Tom Hanks even played the role of Captain Sully in the movie 'Sully'- a must watch for everyone who aims to be truthful rather than follow the herd. Capt. Sully had faith in God when he decided to land on the river. He had a clean career throughout till that point, and he had faith that his experience always tells him the right thing to do. He also believed in the aircraft's ability, in his ability to control the aircraft. He believed that if he touched down smoothly enough, he might just be able to pull this off, as landing on the closest runways would've been a gamble. And he did prove to the world later, during and NTSB and FAA investigation, that under the circumstances that he was put in, what he actually did, was the best course of action anyone could've attempted. Now that's called a balance between faith and belief. You see, if he would've blindly trusted the procedure, he would've chosen to attempt a landing at the closest runways, but with both engines having failed, he would've fallen short of the runway, resulting in casualties both on the plane,as well as on the ground. But his faith in his instincts, combined with his belief in his skill and experience, led to him deciding that the river was the best place to attempt a landing. Today, he is one of the most respected aviators, and an advocate to the aviation community.

What we must really take away from here is that, you may be in any field- arts, sports, academics, anything. But it's important that you don't follow procedures and rules very strictly always. Just like how I got this image without even looking through the view-finder, just like how Sully got the water landing right, it is when you have faith in something beyond your understanding, and believe that there exists something more powerful than your mere self, that you become capable of achieving your true potential.