The Invisible Man In The Sky

“Okay, let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day. Maybe you should've spent that day on compassion.”

- Patch Adams (1998)

Show me one human being who doesn’t have problems in his life. Show me one person who doesn’t have issues. Show me one person who doesn’t have some skeleton in his closet that he/she trying desperately to forget. Everybody has their own reason to be pissed at the Creator for the way things are going on in their life and around them. We all have scores to settle with Him. We all have questions that we hope to ask Him when we reach the pearly gates up top. Why should we just blindly trust in Him when He was the same guy who created the all this pain and suffering in the first place?

Recently I had this pack of relatives visiting us, the whole array of quintessential variety of familial bliss. The whole house was filled with their bags and clothes and jabber. This guy became the VP of so-and-so company. This guy’s kid got employed in so-and-so MNC. This guy’s experimental procedure worked and his tumor got removed. This guy celebrated his 93 birthday on a beach. This guy died and left that woman a huge fortune. This guy divorced his wife for his neighbor. That family had to move to another city because of debt. That couple had to move to another state because of an alleged affair of the guy with the neighbor’s wife. That woman’s children are fighting for the family estate while she is on her death bed. And on and on went on their “this-just-in” news telecast of our huge far-reaching family tree for our own private pleasure - Familial bliss.

Then suddenly some genius brought up the topic of going Shirdi, to a temple there. I was not averse to that trip, I had gone there a couple time before and liked the place. I said I’d come along too, regretted it the very next instant. The whole woman folk of our household were the only ready to go the trip and they being true their species got into a navigational frenzy and put a gazillion places on the list that we could visit cause it comes “on our way”. Most of these places were temples which I thought went with our trip to the Shirdi. But I still till today don’t understand the reason of three malls and five shopping centers and God-only-knows-how-many roadside shops that we stopped that seem to pop up “on our way”.

I don’t say that I hate going to temples or anything. But too much of anything makes me weirdly grouchy. We visited nearly eight crowded, noisy temples til it was time for lunch. And that definitely put me on the edge. I started to pick up fights with my sister for the lamest of things (read shotgun). I even created a huge ruckus with one shopkeeper over the price of a leather wallet (I still think that Rs. 2500 is too much to pay for a wallet!). To add to the wonderful mood I was in, I was in a car with women all jabbering away about the most inane things, and on the wonderful roads that we have here in our country, filled with as many holes in it as people practically living on the roads. The crowds, the noise and the pollution, the jabbering and exhaustion, what more do need to get pissed off!

By six in the evening, I had somehow completed most of the temple-hopping for the day. We would start for Shirdi on the next day. Only the one last stop of the day was left, the grand finale of sorts, the ISKCON Radhe Krishna Temple. I was looking forward to this one the whole day long. Not cause I wanted to visit this place so bad, but cause I really wanted to get this day done with. Even the anger in me had succumbed to desperate tiredness in my bones now. When we finally reached the place, I could barely lift my behind from the bucket seat of the car. I dragged myself through the bag check, the metal detector frisking (all the more reason to pissed off at Kasab and his lot), took off my footwear, washed my hands and feet. And then I entered Heaven.

Or maybe it was just a good replica of it. The whole temple was made of white marble-like stone. The dome was gold, the pedestal was gold, the idols themselves of pure while were clad in silk and doused in gold jewels. The place was filled “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna” chants, that seemed to come from the walls (probably from the hidden speakers). In an odd state of mind I joined the line moving towards the idol. Followed it as if in a trance and did the whole ritual myself, the washing of the palms, collecting the diya, all the while moving towards the idol. When I reached the mob myself, it was surreal. The whole mob was moving as one with the chants, some chanting themselves. I reached the first pedestal, the first pair of idols, then the next, then the next. They were for some reason very distracting. When you see one, you have these feeling that its seeing you alone and none other from the mob around you (probably sounds nuts, but I swear that Radhaji’s smiled at me! ). Then the line kept moving forward and I was suddenly out of the mob. I put the diya in front of another idol and came onto the courtyard. That’s where I saw the most memorable part of the night, that lady in white.

She was a foreigner, probably 60. There were lots of foreigners here, and like most foreigners who come here, was wearing a sari. But she was wearing the plain white ones that widows wear, that’s what that caught my eye, and the expression in her face. She probably was a widow, probably still in mourning. Here, in India, to escape all the sad faces back home, trying to get back her lost self. In this temple to get some answers from God. She probably came here with a lot of anger, anguish and pain. She came here with a heart filled with sorrows that she could not say to people around for fear of making them sad too like her. But you could never say any of that by the expression on her face. It was content, peace maybe. She was smiling with tears in her eyes, the oddest of expressions on the human face, the rarest one. She did not have any more grudges with God. She got what she came for.

Maybe that’s just exactly why we have religions and beliefs. All this unflagging faith that we have in this invisible man in the sky, is probably to be just able to have this one person who you can trust to have all the answers for your questions. To be able to talk to, when there’s no one around that would understand the things that you want to say. To talk to when there aren’t enough words to express what you want to say. God is probably just another you, the better you, who knows you better than you know yourself. The one who can make sense of everything that’s happening or has happened to you and around you. He knows. And you live trusting that He knows, and find solace in that. And when you die you go to His open arms, greet Him like old friends..

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The Kid

“Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises;
And oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.”
- William Shakespeare

I have always had a nagging feeling that I am still not doing all that I can. I am still not using the whole of my potential. It sure seems like that sometimes. People seem to expect a lot from me. And I am very much sure that people are disappointed when I don’t come through. I might have been the same if I were in their place. After they see this guy in front of him as a confident, funny and outgoing person who is smarter the average bear and not without some stuff between his ears. But mostly they just stay within that outside appearance itself and in their own irritatingly stubborn way demand excellence from you. As if you are born on this planet to do this and this alone. To shoot for the stars, be on the top of the heap and be like those uptight pompous pricks who are there already and gloat about it. I am sure there are many others out there like me. Who have at some point or other felt this immense pressure on themselves. Not being able to be who they want to be and to do what they enjoy doing!

I knew someone like that. A very good decent kid who had never done anything wrong or every wronged anybody. The kind of kid who doesn’t sit on the first benches among the toppers who have the answers for every question the teacher asks and shameless kiss their asses and are proud about. These toppers are the ones who in future take the place of these highly knowledgeable teachers as they rarely are the ones that have the guts or the talent to make it out there. My friend never sat in the last benches either. That was the place for the sleepers and mockers and the jocks of the class. The kids who are funny, naughty and rarely are very good in the marks department. These are ones that become politicians or actors or some big entrepreneur. These are the ones that do something in their life. Then there is the middle benches, that’s where our friend sat. This is the place where those kids usually sit who never were very smart but are very hard working. They never were very uptight or selfish, but were very good hearted. The followed around the smart kids but secretly were jealous of them. They stayed away from the back benchers but secretly wanted to be like them, wanted to enjoy their life a little more they were. He sat among such sad confused souls.

This kid always was the target many jokes around the class. He was from a remote village in Gujarat. He had this weird funny accent when he spoke in any language other than his mother tongue. Especially when he spoke in English he used to goof up in a lot of words and put a lot of ‘d’s and ‘t’s around the words he spoke. We made a lot of fun of him. And he never really took any of to heart. He also laughed along. I liked him for that. It takes guts to own up to your drawbacks and still be able to laugh about it. He did not have a bad bone in his body. He used to help me in math (I never too good at it!). He used stay after class to help me with it, though he never really had to. He always brought a lot of snacks when we went to the playground on weekends to play cricket. He never got pissed at anyone, never had a grudge with anybody in his life. I was always amazed how anybody could be so calm and peaceful. He always walked away when a argument would arise. Back then I used to think it as cowardly, now I realise it was the wise move!