I stand beneath a neem tree — centuries old. Its trunk, rough and deeply grooved, rises like an ancient pillar. Its branches spread wide, holding a dense green canopy through which sunlight filters softly.

Beneath this very tree, in the village of Shirdi, in the late nineteenth century, a young boy once sat.
Day after day. In silence. Meditating.

No one knew where he came from.
No one knew his name.
No one knew his religion.

He lived simply. In a mosque.
He wore a plain white robe.
He went from door to door, asking for food — and sharing whatever he received.

He kept a sacred fire burning.
Distributed its ash.
And listened.

And then, gently, he would remind people:
Shraddha. Saburi.
Faith. Patience. Enough to walk through life.

Over time, he came to be known as Sai Baba.
A sage who refused labels.
A fakir who lived in a mosque, yet called it Dwarkamai.
A man who spoke of Allah and echoed Hindu wisdom in the same breath.
A teacher who built no institution, wrote no scripture, claimed no authority.

Only this:
Sabka Malik Ek.
One God. For all.

In life, he dissolved boundaries.
In death too, he resisted them — neither fully buried nor cremated, but resting in samadhi in the very mosque where he had lived.

More than a century later, he is revered… not with the awe reserved for gods, but with a quiet affection — the kind we reserve for someone who still feels like our own.

*

And then, I step outside. Back into the world. Into a phone that will not stop buzzing.

News alerts. War headlines.
The U.S. Israel. Iran.
Drones. Missiles. Counterstrikes.

The contrast between faith and surrender inside the shrine and the clamor for control outside is sharp. And I find myself asking:
How can a world that produces saints also produce wars?

Yet, both come from us. We humans are capable of great tenderness — and great destruction.
The same imagination that lights sacred fires also engineers missiles.
The same intelligence that builds temples designs weapons.

And this is perhaps the deepest paradox of being human.

*

Shirdi doesn’t resolve this contradiction—it reveals it.

Inside, you are reminded of who you are.
Outside, you are reminded of what the world makes of you.

And sometimes, it takes a saint — or a quiet moment beneath a tree — to remind us to hold on to the first, while walking through the second.

*