The ways of the Almighty...

There is a popular line in drama in my mother tongue (Bengali, that is) which goes as "Kotha bolo na; tomra keu shobdo koro na, bhogobaan nidra giyechhen golojog shoite paren na; kotha bolo na!" Translated to English, that stands as "Dont talk, dont make a noise, the Almighty is asleep, and he cannot stand being disturbed, so keep quiet". Every time I hear this line, I feel something very queer, which is perhaps not noticeable in the lines in a hurried read.

The surprise element lies in the statement that the Almighty is asleep. Think about it. Someone whom we visualize as our guardian above, who watches over us, protecting us from harm, noting our deeds and punishing or rewarding us accordingly at the end of our mortal lives (at least so says mythology, of almost any religion) is asleep. ASLEEP. HE is not watching over you. HE does not care about who is doing what, the good the bad and the ugly. Is HE at all interested?

Its a philosophical thought, but it brings to my mind the question "what if?" What if all that we were taught was wrong? What if values, virtues and the fabled "triumph of good" do not exist in reality? What if the good do not get rewarded in any way and die miserably, and the bad who manage their way all the way up are the ones who end up with everything they want in life? What if there is no grand record book of earthly doings? Worse still, what if the judging criteria of a man or woman on earth is not what we imagine it to be? What if it is exactly reverse?

What about the old guy who lives down your street? The poor man spent his life working hard at the local post office. Little did he earn, but spent it unflinchingly to educate his son. Great was his joy on the day when his son finished school. Unbounded was his pride when his son studied in a good college by a scholarship. He held hands with his elderly wife, sitting at the park bench, sighing at having successfully raised a family and served his nation, waiting for his son to come to him with visions of a better life.

The wait never ended. His wife perhaps realized its no good waiting, she quietly passed away one day. Heartbreaking it was, yet an occasion with a silver lining, for on this excuse his son did come home for a week. But then it was all gone, and the shroud of loneliness descended upon him. He waits still, but suspects that his wife knew better, and hopes that one night he too will pass away in his sleep, unnoticed to the rest of the world.

And then relatives will come and say "He was a good man. God rewarded him, he passed away painlessly." Painless, was it? Was that all the reward he deserved? Oh the folly! But the topic changes soon, to more important things like inheritance.

In a Bengali movie called "Kori diye kinlam" (among the better ones) there is a silly old man, who says two lines of great wisdom. When a girl about to be married asks him "Will I be happy in life?" he says "Oh you silly girl, dont you know? In this world he who is rich is happy". And when the girl asks him about punishment after death, he vehemently protests "There is nothing after death. Nothing. With death its finished. Its all gone, dark and hollow". Remarkable. Why have people not thought about this in greater detail?

There is a little girl at the corner of street where I turn. In ragged clothes and dirty hair she scrubs away at the cups and plates piled high and deep at her feet. She works fast, because her angry employer shouts at her when she does not. But in her heart she knows another reason. Everyday when she finishes her work, she gets a dry biscuit from the owner of the ramshackle dhaba. She tries to time this precisely at the hour when her 3-and-a-half foot high hero comes with a holder full of tea glasses. If she succeeds, she manages to share the biscuit with the urchin, who in turn manages one extra cup of tea everyday for this little intimate brunch. The owner looks suspiciously at the pair, and seems to be in an unusual hurry to close shop and go home. She hates it, the moment of separation.

God's children, aren't they? Well they'd better be, for there is nobody else alive who would call them their children. And what is the fate of God's children? Somewhere below the wheels of a car? Or are they to succeed the beggar a little further down? Who keeps note of their tender feelings, and where will those take them?

Don't seethe your temper against the owner of the shop. He does not earn much himself. Has an ailing wife, and a promiscuous daughter who ran away from home for ... He shivers at the thought. God knows where she is now. His wife weeps every night secretly for her. He weeps every night thinking of all the money he owes the street ruffians who threaten him in different ways every week. They are backed by the police, who share in the earnings. Its no good fighting crocodiles in water, so he tries to accommodate. And when bereft of all hope he stumbles along the lanes of the red-light area dead drunk shouting out the name of his daughter, not knowing whether to be happy or sad at the lean prospect of a reply from one of the windows above, a little feeling stretches out for the pair of urchins back at his shop. He'll scold the girl even more the next day, he tells himself. Maybe that way she wont lose discipline like his daughter did. And he'll keep the boy away from her, this is where it all begins. But maybe, just maybe, he'll get her a bigger biscuit.

And in contrast we have God's privileged child. The symbol of Hinduism. The god of the state. He who brings great investments and great industrialization. He who, not so long ago, was charged of inactivity, or rather instigating activities between 27th to 3rd February of 2002. He who was, possibly, indirectly responsible for the death of almost a thousand innocent people, orphaning of children, rape of women and numerous such atrocities. He who was accused of having systematically planned government and security level inaction against a terrible carnage. Numerous aging parents like the one who recently passed away down the street have been pushed to wait forever for their children to return by him. Countless little girls and tea-carrying urchins have been purportedly produced by him, who loiter the streets with no place to call home, and nobody to call dear. Perhaps even today, the graying hairs and the wrinkled brows of some father like my dear dhabawala try hard to conceal the screams of imputation to the Almighty against him, only to break down in the comfortable numbness of inebriation.

But is HE listening? His ideal demagogue came through clean. Of course he did, the Government found nothing wrong. They even got him a better rank and position. And I am quite sure, after death, if he stands before HIS court, he'll come clean there too. "Pichhpaa noy bidhatao dudhete jol meshate" we say in Bengali - Even HE does not hesitate to mix water in milk. HE could with with a little more money and power HIMSELF.

Maybe in the Christian schools when the kids line up in the morning for their prayers, they should just say:

Dear God,

Are you watching?

Amen.