15. The poet who appeased the Wrath of God.

I returned to India in the middle of January.

Before starting the first semester of 2012, they moved me to a 14th–floor apartment ten blocks from the university.

I bought bamboo furniture, very beautiful and comfortable, and I decorated the altar to my divinity with censers, an essential compartment in every Hindu home.

September 11 was caused by the wrath of God against America

For a few months, the world was shaken by tremors, tsunamis, and earthquakes; the frequency was almost weekly and multitudes of the dead fell.

The gurus and charlatans spoke of the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.

In February I finished editing my film Hamlet Unbound and, after paying the one-hundred-dollar fee they required, I sent it to the Cannes Film Festival, where it went through several elimination rounds.

I was expecting the final answer in the second week of April.

It was then that I learned, through my musings, that Mr. Hachat was conspiring so that my employment contract would not be renewed in October.

In Bucaramanga, my enemies also laboriously conspired so that the university where I had worked in Bucaramanga would not hire me again.

I took refuge in prayer.

It was the morning of April 11, and after studying the scriptures, I reflected on various passages, particularly Psalm 28, 3:

Draw me not away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, but mischief is in their hearts (KJ21).

Also, Psalm 35, 7 - 8:

For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit;

Without cause have they digged a pit for my soul.

Let destruction come upon him unawares;

And let his net that he hath hid catch himself:

With destruction let him fall therein. (ASV)

The words resounded like sentences in my heart, and I noticed that the scene from what I read on September 11, 2001.

I understood the magnitude of the test I had fallen into the previous year, when the thirst for money, fame, or power, so characteristic of the Arian heresy that dominates the Inquisition and its spurious inquisitors, tempted me to deny Jesus.

And then I felt the anguish of all those he had known in India at his imminent death.

"No, Lord!" I pleaded, remembering what I had already experienced on September 11, 2001.

That year he was living in Britain, where he was also feverishly writing essays on theology and literature.

In May I had been offered a teaching position by Northwestern University in Chicago after an arduous selection process, but I made the mistake of informing my former Temple University faculty. My biggest flaw has been my faith in others.

One of my former tutors contacted Chicago to persuade them to hire one of his protégés in my place. As a result, my position was abruptly terminated. I forgot the matter and resigned myself to teaching Spanish as a professor at the University of Manchester.

September arrived, and on the morning of the 11th, around 8 am English time, I was studying, as I did every day, The Holy Bible, and I read several passages, amongst them:

I have created the destroyer to cause havoc.

No weapon formed against you will succeed,

and you will refute any accusation

raised against you in court.

This is the heritage of the Lord’s servants,

and their vindication is from me (Isaiah 54, 16 – 17 – CSB)

I saw hundreds of men and women crying in the streets

I thought of the teachers who had conspired against me, and of Bush's indolence towards the victims of the bombings in Iraq, and told myself that this time I would continue writing my essay on atheism instead of praying to defend the nation from Washington and Franklin.

As I already mentioned, I saw in my dreams the city of New York flooded, and also with an explosion in its skyscrapers. Such a dream led me to write my novel “Manhattan's New Soirees”, which was published in Bucaramanga in 2000, with copies sent to all countries of the world in which I had friends.

During that time, I prayed the rosary every day with my ex-wife Michelle Jannin, who had converted to Catholicism after my third pilgrimage to Fatima, by my penance, crawling on her knees a kilometre before the altar of the Virgin of Fatima in 1998, for the sins of my Colombian brothers, the same ones who on September 2022 approved the attack by the FBI and The Inquisition against me..

It was the holy rosary that would ultimately prevent the catastrophe of the flood around 2005, but that is another story that I will relate to in another book. I will say for now that I dreamed in advance of the plane crash that landed in the Hudson, of which Tom Hanks made a movie, just days after my friend Sascha travelled to live in New York (American authorities were already alert because of my visionary gifts, gifts from Jesus that I did not understand at the time).

We prayed the rosary at night.

I was concentrating on writing the essay "The Crisis of Atheism[1],” which would eventually be published in the London newspaper "The Philosopher" when I heard insistent calls to my cell phone.

I didn't answer but continued writing, but Michelle insisted and insisted.

“There are bombs in NY, Judy tells me!”

I was already so focused on my writing that I kept working.

Judy plays the role of Gertrudis in “Hamlet Unbound”.

Only today, September 11, 2022, I realize that other of my actors were contacted and unwilling by the strange alliance of the Inquisition with the FBI and the CIA. Isn't the USA a nation of religious freedom? I will cover the subject in detail in another book.

Michelle called me again and this time I decided to turn on the TV. I interrupted my work to see horrified the first of the twin towers fall, and almost immediately the second.

I fell on my knees and prayed then, avoiding–God tells me now, thus, that plane number three were crashed into Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, cities where my closest friends from the USA lived.

Today I understand that acquaintances have offered to spy on me before the imposing authority that the FBI awakens. I will recount in another book how, with the sole purpose of destroying these messages, the FBI organized two false companies in conjunction with the Bogotá and Bucaramanga book fairs during this year 2022, and how I exposed their modus operandi due to the shortcomings that the Lord Jesus floated before my eyes.

The failure of such an expensive and unnecessary operation shocked other intelligence agencies, as well as increased interest in my writing and videos.

Should I not, therefore, now intercede for the Hindus?

"Is there only one individual that you consider fair?" asked that portentous voice of the God of the old testament, the same as Shiva, the same as Allah.

I thought of my friends, and saw their shortcomings; they concealed petty selfish interests. I prayed for them. The presence was so intense that it exhausted me. Staggering, I walked to the edge of my bed, where I fell fast asleep.

Screams of women and children woke me up. When I opened my eyes my ceiling fan oscillated from left to right.

It was an earth tremor! I got up and went to the balcony, from where I saw people screaming, and running in all directions. I felt that I should go to the kitchen.

I walked on instinct and I passed by the altar to Jesus Christ.

"Then," I thought, "the building will fall and I will survive in the rubble. They will rescue me and I will live."

It irritated me to think that my whole world would cease to exist, so I returned to the altar of Jesus Christ, and throwing myself on my knees before him, pointing with my fingers at his burning heart, I cried:

“Lord Jesus, son of God! You can stop this earthquake! You said you love me! Have mercy on us!”

And the earthquake stopped.

The joy that invaded me was sublime. I had class at three in the afternoon, so I got ready and left quickly. As I walked on the sidewalk, I ran into a lady who was screaming in terror:

“Tsunami! The Tsunami is coming again!”

I approached him with my face glowing from what I had experienced and told him to calm down, that there was not going to be a tsunami.

“You!" she told me sobbing. “You tell the truth! Thank you! Thank you!”

And as I passed, I reassured passers-by. My happiness was interrupted as soon as I entered the College and saw Mr. Hachat.

“Where were you? he snapped at me out loud. “We had an earthquake here!”

I looked at him puzzled. He immediately realized the absurdity of his question. It was obvious that I too had experienced the tremor. His anger was because of my calm face.

“You can go!,” he screamed. “They're all gone! There are no classes today!”

Returning to my apartment, I saw hundreds of men and women crying in the streets. I couldn't bear their shocked faces. So, I went back to my altar and knelt.

“Lord! Have mercy on us!”

“Have they pitied the just?”

This time the voice was not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from the Creator in all his wrath. Dies Irae wrote the men of the Middle Ages. I thought of Shiva, the local divinity, who is a destructive god to whom his faithful pray not to destroy them but their enemies.

“Which just?” I hesitated.

I understood that my travels around the world were actually the journeys of a just man amid serpents and beasts and that if it had not been for the Lord's intervention, I would have disappeared from this world years ago.

"But they are my generation, my Lord," I begged. “They are distressed by earthquakes all over the world. Forgive them!”

God was moved.

"All right," he consoled me; “earthquakes will stop, but diseases will come.”

And everything returned to normal.

Months later I prepared to write these experiences in prose, but the Lord asked me to first write them in poems. These poems first arrived in Rome in the summer of 2012, and were read by Pope Benedict XVI, who was already preparing his resignation and his succession:

Hymns to Jesus - Disease shall approach with its baleful breath

And false prophets I shall abandon, He said,

Those who steer thee away from Truth's true stead.

I beheld men and women of this earth's span,

With whom I communed for days, side by side.

I contended they bore some nobility,

In my fervent defense, slumber's embrace I found,

But waking, buildings moved, shook to the ground,

Shiva's wrath unleashed, Lord's presence awry.

Yet women's cries stirred my heart profound,

For Thy blessings, O Lord, I implored, return,

And the jumbled blocks settled in peace's yearn,

Capernaum's waters calmed after tempest's mound.

"I shan't shield those who hold me in disdain";

"But they are my kin," O Lord, I pled,

"The quaking of earth shall ebb," He gently said,

"But disease shall descend, its grip to maintain."

The Lord arranged, in his wisdom, a test of love that would sustain the events that I write about here.

It was almost 5 pm and I checked my emails. There was one from my father:

"Hello, my dear children. I want you to be aware of your Mommy's operation... Yesterday after the surgery she had a small heart attack, according to what the doctors tell me.

Dr. Martha Trillos, who was the anesthesiologist, decided that she should be transferred to the Intensive Care Room, to keep her under permanent observation...

It seems that they are going to schedule her for next week to do a catheterization to be sure if there is vein obstruction and see which way to go. I love you so much, Children."

I had no idea that my mother was going to have surgery, so I went back to the sanctuary and meditated to talk with the Lord.

"She's the one who wants to go," I heard.

So, I invoked her: "Mom!.” And I saw her young, shining. I smiled at her and she turned her back on me: her only aim was to get reunited with my deceased sister, Janeth Cristina. I then spoke to my little sister and she, shrugging her shoulders, told me:

"She doesn't want to listen to me!"

I turned my attention to the Lord and begged him to save my mother, not to let her go.

"Her time for her is over," the Lord told me.

“But she is my mother!”

"If I agree to your pleas," he told me, "you're going to regret it."

“I don't mind!” he said.

“Are you willing to sacrifice the recognition that awaits you at Cannes?”

He was referring to my film, Hamlet Unbound. It was my life's work, but I wouldn't trade it for my mother's health.

"Yes, sir," I said. I have never chased fame.

"So be it," he told me.

So, I called my father in Colombia.

"Don't authorize my mom to have a catheterization," I told him.

“Why?”

“The Lord Jesus is going to heal her.”

My confidence was such, and the intervention of the Holy Spirit was so strong, that my father agreed.

The doctors, I found out later, were furious, and they made him sign a document in which they held him responsible for the eventual death of my mother. Two weeks later, after she had already recovered, they performed a cardiogram on my mother.

“Impossible! the doctors exclaimed upon reading it. She has the heart of a fifteen–year–old girl!”

I then called my mother, who told me that she had indeed longed to leave this world, but that the sudden appearance of her deceased parents had stopped her.

“What do you do, darling?” my grandfather Rafael scolded her, and behind him, my grandmother Carmen. “What is this about going around looking for death?”

Investigators can check the veracity of my story in the annals of Clínica Foscal, and interview Dr. Cossio, who operated. Months later, at a meeting, the doctors concluded that the machines that had recorded my mother's cardiac arrest had suffered an electronic failure.

Just as Jesus predicted, my mother suddenly became, under the influence of her psychiatrist, the most skeptical of what had happened. She concluded that it was all the product of my delirium and that the machines had indeed suffered a malfunction.

"If God helps him so much," she told me several times, inspired by texts from the Old Testament, "how is it possible that you haven't amassed a fortune?"

She attributed her visions to chemicals in her brain and, when I travelled to Mexico, she misplaced all my religious images, including the one in the almanac of Jesus, through which the Lord had spoken to me. Well, not only in India but also in Mexico and Colombia I have fought new battles.

It was the last one, in Colombia, that I feared (now I know without foundation) that I would lose my life due to witchcraft by santeros.

The Antichrist’s persecution reduced me to a modest existence. Never, however, have I or my wife lacked the essentials since a rich man is not the one who has more properties in notary documents, but the one who enjoys the grace of the Lord.

My respect for my mother kept me from writing about these experiences for nine years, until the overwhelming arrival of illnesses led me, as an offering, to record it roughly in this blog.

When I told Thomas what had happened, not only did he believe my words, but he reminded me of the sanctuary that existed in a corner of the Campus of the Film School.

“You are stepping on a sacred field, dedicated to the Holy Virgin Mary!,” he told me.

"But the new owners are not Christians," I replied. Why hasn't it been removed?

“Are you crazy?” he exclaimed. “In India, destroying a shrine to a foreign god is considered the worst of mistakes. Great misfortunes fall on those who make fun of any divinity, be it Lord Murugan or The Virgin Mary.”

It was again the Lord Jesus Christ who intervened, diverting that destructive agent towards Pondicherry

When I returned to my college, I related what had happened to my dean, Mr. Bankras, who boasted of being an atheist. He formulated some sarcastic remarks, to which I replied with theological arguments.

In the end, we parted cordially. It seemed that he would forget my comments, but the next day a team of bricklayers and priests were working in the center of the campus, in front of my building.

“What do they do?” I asked Thomas.

“They erect a shrine to Lord Ganesha,” he replied, pointing to a huge statue of the elephant-headed god.

In July my student Loki, whose command of English was perfect, introduced me to his grandfather, Mr. Bergrana, who had been a Public Servant.

The simplicity of his apartment, his wisdom, and his kindness impressed me.

I talked to him about the divine manifestations that he had had the previous year and, to my surprise, he told me that they were part of the philosophy of the original Mahabharata, written in Tamil three thousand years ago, a text that he had translated into English throughout the last years.

I showed him my text on cinema and my film on corruption in Colombia and, to my surprise, the following month he invited me to have dinner to discuss them.

“I think his observations on cinema based on epistemology are very solid,” he told me, “and what I find most innovative is his approach to cinema from the universal theatre.”

He then discussed Kennedy’s crimes:

“It has continuity,” he told me, making my evening happy, “excellent lighting and very deep dialogues. But I'm surprised they didn't harm you for exposing corruption in your country.”

I explained to him that the film had gone practically unnoticed, even though it had been discussed on the Radio Station of the National University.

“Isn't that enough?” he told me. “There are films that are shown and no one comments.”

“They criticized shortcomings in the acting,” I said, “and rightly so. Most of the actors didn't learn the script, and we had to use cardboard for them to read the texts.

"That's something only film experts know," he consoled me. “In any case, it is a great step that you have taken the theme of corruption to the cinema. Your compatriots see that the problem is not with the politicians, but with themselves.”

It was shortly after the April experience that I travelled for two months to Canada and the United States.

The contract would be terminated on October 31, the favourite day of sorcerers and santeros. 

And, as I will relate in my novel about India, that day the gurus and priests wanted to manipulate a cyclone, which I saw approaching me as I left my apartment with my belongings.

It was again the Lord Jesus Christ who intervened, diverting that destructive agent towards Pondicherry, a spa from which my enemies forged their curses. The local newspaper reported the following day:

"Fortunately, there are no reports of major damage in and around Chennai, despite heavy rain and strong winds."

The object of my work as a writer and film and theatre director has been, is and will be to express, through metaphor and story, what I have lived under the grace of the Lord: unexpected trips, healings, attacks that are destroyed before hurting me or my loved ones, unexpected help, premonitions, temptations, and fasting.

I also know that the plague that ravages the world will cease the day when there are a sufficient number of hearts of goodwill. And the remedy will come, not by the effort of science, but by the grace of the Lord.

Fortunately, there are no reports of major damage in and around Chennai, despite heavy rain and strong winds

[1] Santander, Hugo (2003). The Crisis of Atheism. The Philosopher 91 (1).