A medicine called Hope

post september 11, the world went into choke mode. world war! (choke! choke!); economies crashing! (choke! choke!); large-scale destruction! (choke! choke!). we could sense the tension and feel the fear. it was as if there was nothing we could do except hope. and it is this hope that galvanised citizens into action: there was a surfeit of prayer meetings and healing sessions.reiki clubs went into o v e r d r i v e sending chain mails all over the world. all efforts rested on that one primal element of human nature -- hope. hope is more powerful than the best of medicines. in fact, every therapy is built on a foundation of hope. when you take a pill for your headache, you do it with the hope that your pain will vanish. therefore, it is essential that we hold onto hope, because many successful stories have been wrought around it. it is common to find an insulin-dependent diabetic asking doctor, is it true that once on insulin, always on insulin? or a hivpositive patient looking skywards and asking, oh god, why me? we can hope for a patient to get well only if we zealously guard his hope to survive, to surmount. this column too revolves around hope. when people write in with their prayer requests, they do it with the hope that i will publish them and also hope that people will pray for them. and it is this very same hope that has weaved magic in the form of people getting well just through people's prayers. we take this hope trip a bit further. i invite you to tell me your success stories. if you have conquered diabetes, tell me how you did it. if you've won over cancer, let me know. or aids, e p i l e p s y , parkinson's, alzheimer's... any ailment known to man. success stories such as these will act as a tonic to many a tired soul. mission world: two weeks back, we had started on this group prayer initiative to heal the world of the imminent danger that it was facing. the requirement was to pray daily at 10 pm for 15 minutes for peace to dwell. the world this week seems a little peaceful; the war clouds seem to be thinning. prayer request 1: catherine requests prayers for john who she says is on his deathbed. she has heard of miracles happening with prayers and wants to see that in john's case.