Sentimental Chameleons—Part II

‘Magic! I don’t have any magic wand, Ram, Sharma said with a guffaw. ‘But honestly, it’s that face … the power of the motorman’s face that does all the magic … that brings me all the luck and laurels. I had been to the railway station; saw that translucent face before walking into the Bank. And that did the trick … that got me the loan.’

‘Cut out that crap, Sharma’, Ram snorted, his face changed color. ‘You’re an idiot … a sentimental idiot. I sometimes get puzzled thinking how  a post graduate in Science can talk and act like a crank. You read too much into accidental happenings and attribute the causes to what you call the power of a man you’re constantly meeting. All bullshit.’

 ‘Don’t blabber, Ram’, Sharma snapped at his friend. He became furious hearing Ram taunted his honest faith as idiosyncrasy.  Sensing Sharma’s mood, Ram backed out; he had no inclination to lock horns with his friend over his foible. Ram left the canteen, saying he had to go and arrange for the GM’s farewell meet.

‘Go to hell,’ Sharma shouted at the Ram’s retreating figure. He was still furious, sitting lonely at the canteen and brooding … cut chewing how he met the motorman; he could still remember with gratitude the day of his meeting with him. That day, a few weeks ago, did not dawn well for him and he felt like sitting on an inferno. His mother, keeping the pink of health until then, had a massive heart attack early in the morning. Perplexed, Sharma admitted her into a nearby hospital. Doctors attending on her told him that they could say anything about his mother’s condition only after 24 hours.

Sharma wilted; panicked at the possibility of losing his mother; and smelt disaster sitting at his doorsteps. He felt blank, came out of the hospital in a trance. The summer sun, outside the hospital, was, like a ball of fire, blasting the metro.

He rambled on along the streets adjacent to the hospital in a stupor before reaching, by reflex, to the Egmore railway station. Sitting in one of the shabby wooden benches placed on the platform, he closed his eyes and not his mind which was hovering over his mother battling for life in a hospital. He came out of his reverie when he heard the hooting of a unit train and the fuss and clamor it had created on the platform.

He saw an old man waving hands at him from the motor car. His smile was ingratiating. Sharma’s cell phone rang when he too was smiling at the motorman. His sister spoke on the phone rather excitedly, saying that their mother had since recovered completely and the doctors called her recovery a miracle. Sharma hung up abruptly and saluted the motorman. ‘Mother must have been recovered at the moment when he was having the Dharshan of the noble soul. Can a human face have such an amazing healing power?’ Sharma said to himself.

So, from that day onwards Sharma plunged into quite a new world … a world of blind faith. His trips to the railway station to look out for the motorman became frequent. He went to the station at the time of fixing the marriage for Rohini, his sister; at the time of getting college admission for his brother; at the time of writing promotion test and at the time of Rohini’s delivery of a male child. For all and sundry things, Sharma was going to the station to take a look at his godly-figure. In fact, this had become one of his daily chores … an inseparable part of life.

When Sharma got home it was late in the night. It was at Ram’s insistence that he attended the GM’s farewell meet. It was a dreary affair. All those who called the GM a moron in the past, now showered praise on him eulogizing his business acumen, managerial skills and his Good Samaritan attitude to the staff members. ‘All euphemistic wise cracks’. Sharma thought.

Sharma had a quick shower, came striding over to the dining table where his mother, after having laid the table, was waiting for him.

‘Amma, I have good news for you. Today, I got our home loan sanctioned by the Bank’, Sharma said setting the plate on the table.

‘All god’s grace’, his mother replied, holding aloft her folded hands, a gesture of thanks to her gods.

‘No, Amma. It’s all due to the divine face that I see everyday’, Sharma quipped, his eyes glowed with pride.

‘O.K. Let it be’, Sharma’s mother smiled. ‘Now listen to me Sharma. The day after tomorrow is an auspicious day. Having got the loan, why don’t we have ‘Bhoomi Puja’ on that day?’

‘Good idea, Amma. I’ll make arrangements for the Puja tomorrow. But before that, let me go to the station and have the Dharshan of our man.’ Sharma stood up, walked over to the sink and washed his hands.

[To be continued]

Image courtesy: Google

Prayers Not Aladdin Lamps

Prayers, like breathing, are an integral part of human life. They are considered more sacred than hard work. Bereft of a scientific sentiment and a rationalist mind-set, people believe that prayers to the gods of their choices will bring to their doorsteps all comforts of life: health, wealth and a powerful status in society.

May be these are puritan prayers. But, amazingly, sinful souls also resort to prayers with a view to getting them pardoned from the misdeeds they commit in life. Prayer is thus considered Aladdin’s Lamp, the possession of which is frantically sought by every human soul.

Pathetically, prayers are always purpose-oriented, having specific demand-tags attached to them. Again, they are not a one-time affair and the god in question is continuously solicited by men either for getting more of what they already have or for retaining it.

Fear of losing comforts that are presumed to have been achieved through prayers always haunts men. Swami Adiswarananda aptly describes men’s predicament thus: “The healthy have the fear of disease, the wealthy of thieves and the robbers, the beautiful of the old age, the socially prominent of dishonor, the learned of rivals and the virtuous of scandal.”

Advent of money, coupled with the advancement of science and technology, makes the world a global village that offers droves of comforts to men. These are sought to be owned by the human tribe not through hard work but through prayers.

Prayers have now become gimmicks with the evolution of innumerable gods. Each caste or sub-caste has its own god. Families too have their own deities. Abodes of gods don’t stop with cities and villages. Every pavement or platform is now littered with a variety of small, petty and makeshift temples.

Gods in such temples are worshipped in many unique ways. Along with mass prayers, the rural gods are offered padayals [special food] which normally contain a sackful of goat meat and a bottle of arrack. People who feed their gods in this way promise more sacks and bottles if their prayers are heard and answered.

Conventional prayers of the above kind are always visible. Conversely, most of ‘have-all’ do not have faith in explicit prayers; theirs are implicit and silent. You cannot trace and decipher the gods to whom they pray. But everything – their requests and the god’s response-comes to light the moment these prayerists offer some gifts or presents to the gods of their choice, who had heard their prayers and responded favorably. The gift of a Tusker to the Guruvayoor Temple by one of the TamilNadu Chief Ministers is a case in point.

Today, in the name of religion, terrorism is unleashed but some disgruntled elements who, following the dictates of their leaders stage destructive activities in alien lands, causing the loss of thousands of human precious lives.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon without any compassion for the human lives involved in their operation, underscore the extent of the havoc one could cause if one’s senses are allowed to be controlled by fanatics. The world is thus exposed to violence and counter-violence.

Nothing goes wrong when a person offers prayers for his/her own development and family’s well-being. It is one of the natural traits of man, which compels him to place his self above all other things. But, dangers peep in when prayers are offered by the religious with an ulterior motive of getting political clout and command.

Today, mass prayers are resorted to for the purpose of showing the strength of a particular religion to the powers-that-be. Even now there are places in India where people belonging to a particular caste are not allowed to offer prayers in temples by the upper, high-class religious fanatics.

“I pray for nectar. If I cannot get the nectar, I shall not fall back upon ditch waters,” said Swami Vivekananda.

Here, in our country, bigots pray both for nectar and ditch water—nectar for them and ditch water for their rivals. Secularism can be said to have grown only when people begin praying for the whole humanity not for their own self-aggrandizement.

*

 [I got an insignia from the Delhi-based ‘Alive’ mag to enter into the world of writing when they chose to publish this post in their June, 2002 issue. Thus ‘Alive’ had initiated me into the realm of writing a decade ago and made me go the whole hog with my tryst with words, publishing, off and on, a host of my writes. Though this post had the privilege of having been set in fine-print, it now looks mediocre not reflecting the metamorphism my current writings are sporting. But, back then, I was nascent in the realm of writing, catching up with its ropes.]

Image courtesy: Alive mag