The Forbidden Fruit

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:16:

 The moony naked couple in the Garden of Eden has been a curious and interesting subject and so are  the paintings and caricatures of the first couple as scriptures tell us. It is curious and interesting because of the dress code they followed in the early stages and in due course of their evolutionary process and damnation. The serenity of the Garden itself with the sole exception of the serpent was wondrous and ran pleasantly in the imagination. 

As a child of about eight, I was taken to the cinema to see the film, “The Bible”, directed by John Huston. The film recounted from the times of genesis to Adam & Eve, Moses, Abraham, Noah, tower of Bable and almost a good number of chapters from the Old Testament. Honestly, the serenading nude couple did not titillate my imaginations as perhaps I was too young to decipher and provide attributes. However the film invoked a spark of fire that in later times proved to be exasperatingly inquisitive to some but a means of immense acquisition for me and my thought process. (Later in my teens, I sneaked into watch a film of the same name produced by some non-entity in Malayalam knowing well it was much sleazy and titillating is another matter held secret). 

Exiting the cinema after watching John Huston’s Bible, the questions that I asked myself and some other elders were not answered. One such incertitude was about the great deluge and Noah’s ark. A naturalist of sorts and a conservationist, his love for animals and other living things was app laudable. But I wondered why did he leave out the dinosaurs from having refuge in his ark? And there seemed to be all possible beasts of the wilderness in the Garden of Eden but dinosaurs was nowhere to be seen. Did the great flood precede the prehistoric times when those beasts roamed in abundance? Or was creation as laid out in the Genesis precede the advent of the dinosaurs? Well those were too impertinent asking by an adolescent. And later I found to my amusement the answers!

It is indeed matters of food for thought that we seek, read, and spend considerable time of our short life to learn and acquire knowledge or information on matters that do not concern us, affect us or about people whom we may not even ever meet in life; of people dead and alive we have no business to learn and know about. We go to many frontiers to know about matters that are hypothesis, conjunctions and those that may be probable in the future, by when we would be dead and gone, to be recycled back into a pinch of stardust. We often show childish curiosity in many matters that are around- a “neotenic” trait that baffles. And as some would argue, should not be cared a hoot as it is not pertinent to our living. But then why do we go about ravenous, hunt and devour knowledge that may in fact be insignificant or of no use to our living?

Old Testament mentions the decree of God that Adam & Eve desist from eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge- the forbidden fruit. Clearly God’s way of telling that he shall rather not have his creation enlightened and acquire ideas that can also be used to usurp his position. He did admit to his jealous nature when he without mincing words said, “I forbid you from worshiping any other Gods, for I, your God is a jealous God”( Exodus). This is precisely what we hear and see politicians and authority go about desperately trying in their vile and cunning ways to enforce- proscribing books and banishing artists, their creations, snuffing opinions and expressions. The officialdom and the seat of authority have always been wary of acquisition of knowledge and ideas by the masses. The diktat Catholic Church pronounced against the fairytale of “Harry Potter” is one among the many recent examples. 

All of us have been fed with fairy tales and stories of witches and sorcerers in our formative age. I wonder if that have in any way distorted our character, inhibited our intellectual growth or displaced our moral values. It is in us that we have to seek knowledge. It is in the acquisition of knowledge and information with the naughty intensity of a child that makes us human beings. It is perhaps that what has aided in distancing us from our primordial cousins’ the apes and primates. It is in us, that juvenile characteristics are continued by the adults of our species. And it is that which keep us from plummeting into an insipid and inodorous life, where skepticism and hunger for knowledge is banished, muffled, and is nonexistent.

The aphorism that there is enough in the world for man’s needs but not for his wants is true and if man can substitute the seamless material bounty he seeks unashamedly and greedily with hunger for knowledge, then, that would make life a splendid dream to live.