The unimportance of being us

 Why do people cling on to the belief in the force they call God, even when it is so apparent at times that the inevitable has happened and if there is, or not such a force , it is helpless and status quo cannot be retrieved, or changed to our desire? Why do people pray for well being and fervently plead to their God for salvation in the after life but blatantly cross the rubicon of the commandments?

Some pray longingly to God for wealth, some for physical well being, some to stave of death, some for nemesis to others and so on and so forth. The other day I got a routed email from an acquaintance – it was titled “The fairy of wealth”.

The message was attached to a picture with a large room stacked with currency and a fairy standing by with a wand. The message exhorted and implicitly warned me that if the pictorial message was not circulated to seven people in the next twenty four hours dire consequences will befall me. I would not decline money if it comes as lottery but was in no mood to acquiesce the fairy.

During a discourse by a reasonably well known and financially galloping mystic, a gentleman I knew, who is worth assets of at least a few hundred million and more ask him in all seriousness if he could teach him alchemy. I for once was fortunate to see the today’s version of ‘Midas’ in flesh and blood.

A few months ago I happened to go to a famous and commercially rich temple. In fact I had to tag on with a friend and his accomplices. We were ushered in through a narrow path way (through VIP enclosure) past the serpentine queue of devotees and into the sanctum of sanctorum. I respectfully but with lot of amusement watched them pay obeisance and pray to the deity. At times their expressions were nothing but comical (no pun meant). In fact it was so. The prayer and rituals consumed around thirty minutes. Which also meant that since we were ‘Very Valued’ devotees of the deity we could hang around their much longer while the commoner was whisked away after a glimpse of the deity inside! Once out of the temple the topic of discussion my friend initiated was quite on the matters of promiscuous indulgence. And that he being a media person and consequently a familiar face cannot with comfort indulge in exploits outside marital relationship. So much so for the fervent prayers, respect and fear of God a short while before!

This is the state and statements of a mother, from whom fate had wrenched away her son. The boy in his mid twenties was drowned and body not recovered from a lake in Atlanta US. The parents are practicing Syrian Catholic Christians. The intensity of agony and trauma can be well imagined. The mother has now become a freak and recluse of sorts. She carries the Bible and a photograph of her son all the while. Christian help groups and friends gather in her house often for consoling prayer meetings. She is quiet at times, and then she weeps for long inconsolably. It is two months now since the tragedy. Now she and her husband go to the church every day without fail, perhaps a kind of deluding! They were Sunday church goers and practicing Christians in that sense. She makes statements that “I will not leave that fellow Christ until he brings back my son. He must tell me why he did this to me”. Reminds me of the story ‘Monkeys Paw’, wherein the grieving mother seeks the  powers of the talisman and wishes that their son who was maimed and killed crushed in an industrial accident be brought back to life. And behold he came back to life but it was the crushed and contorted creature that came to them alive. And the father had to usurp the grieving mother and wish the last wish to the talisman to take away the creature –‘their dead son’.

A few months ago on business tour outside India I lost almost a hundred thousand Rupees in an apparent ATM fraud. Coming back to India I have been in constant complaining mode with my Bank. When I realized that I was cheated the feeling was of despondency. Felt like a fool and stupid at that. It could be my careless operation of the dispensing machine. I felt terribly guilty. And goodness forgive me that sum was what was required for the college annual fees for Ara.

However the other day I was informed by the Bank that the matter was sorted out and they have received instructions to credit my account with the sum. Their anti- fraud team had gone through the CCTV footage at the ATM and found what and how the fraud actually happened. It will be insufficient to say how relived I was. When this issue was elatedly told to a family friend she said, “That was the hand of God”. I wondered loudly where this hand of graciousness was when the fraudsters took the money from the ATM.  She said, “well the devil had his way then”.

That tells after all, the matters of life are just another T-20 cricket. You cannot tell which way and how it heads until it is over. A game of chess as the old timers said. And most of the while we play we stay intoxicated by the belief and wish that we are something special to be taken care of and handled with kid gloves. But the God we put up there may think otherwise more than often. He may not need us for the sun to rise and set and the planets to move around the stars. We are not important enough.

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