After five hectic days of going under the news and into the minds and acts of investors as they negotiated a 4,000 point fall in the Sensex followed by a 2,000 point recovery last week, the one thing I’m completely convinced about is that finally faith moves not only mountains, but everything in the esoteric, real and financial worlds. Of the esoteric we know enough, for faith is the currency through which we transact with the other side, using the instrument of prayer. But led by statements like ‘I’ve lost faith in the market’, last week opened up a whole new world of faith investigations for me.

What does that statement mean? The answer, like the complexities of the human mind, is manifold. At its simplest, it is the cry of lost souls’ lost notional wealth to those who they perceive as ‘gods of the market’ — the government, the FIIs, large investors... anyone but themselves. At the next level, it is a pseudo-rational cry of the pseudo-intellectual, who while buying the cubism of Pablo Picasso, can’t see the complexity under the colours — the impressionistic-realism of Diego Velazquez’ Las Meninas (1656) lying behind Picasso’s who painted its 58 versions in 1957.

But it is the deeper, psychological level of mind manipulation which turns wishful thinking into financial hopes that, led by a petty success of a rising tide in a four-year global bull run, gather momentum to turn past performance into a steady future. At what time does successful experience become dogmatic truth, a trail that old souls in young bodies feel will take them on a predetermined, stable path to prosperity, financial and spiritual?

... contd.