Knock knock, who’s there?
Some questions have answers and some answers have questions. The trick is to learn the difference between the two and never blurt out a…
Some questions have answers and some answers have questions. The trick is to learn the difference between the two and never blurt out a straight answer to a crooked question. I am often asked whether i believe in God. A straightforward answer would be a yes or a no; but the question is more crooked than it seems so it doesn’t merit fairness on my end. So, i usually spin a yarn around why it doesn’t matter whether i believe in something or not and how i’m just another miserable cretin who happens to have a job but will die nonetheless and will be forgotten like most of us. The bigger picture clearly indicates how we and our lame questions and our supposed quest for truth don’t make a difference to how the world runs or has been running since our perverted tailbones showed up.
Sorry. I digressed.
Let’s stick to God. So, personally, i have nothing against the idea of a superbeing who takes care of us for the most part. It’d be a relief to know that somebody up there or down there is accountable for our creation and destruction. It gets tricky only when we try to patent God and add our edits to how that entity should or shouldn’t be. For a Hindu, God is formless and yet has a form. The mantra is pretty simple: Let your imagination go wild and you’ll find God wherever and however you want it to be. According to Vedas, God is everywhere be it in the form of animals or forces of nature that one can’t explain or even in stationery objects like books. The freeway demands that you are free to find your own God. For a Muslim, God is formless too and one’s good deeds help skip the gap between God and a human. For a Christian of any denomination, God has a human form but not without the divine tassels. Thus, different religions have different approaches towards God. There are no shortcuts in any of them. There is no looking back either. Religion, by definition, is an agency and is meant to end up noisier than required.
For me, God lies in honesty.
Form or formless, we are capable of reaching God through our five senses.
When a baby smiles at you for no reason.
When rain pitter-patters on your window.
When a flower forces you to know its name.
When ghar-ka-khana has less to do with home and more to do with ma.
When the fan suddenly stops working in the middle of the night.
A sincere reaction is the least nature demands from us. Yet, more often than not, we are incapable of being true to ourselves, let alone others. And that’s where the concept of God turns into a snowball of conceit. You desperately want someone to be there for you but you don’t have the desire to be there for yourself.
Sorry. I digressed again.