WHY AND THE WHEREFORE

Life takes us through curious turns; makes us do things which we would normally never do, not even in our wildest dreams; and if we are lucky enough we enjoy what we go through. It sets up encounters with strange people, who change the way we look at life and make us strangers to ourselves. Perhaps, that is why they say, life is a journey.

As we grow old, we think we grow wiser. But the fact of the matter is that we become more unyielding, mulish and in more ways than one, foolish. Some of us get so entangled in the mess that we create that we do not even perceive that change- from what we were to what we have become. Are we all not mere bundles of ideas and emotions, conditioned by the journey of our life?

We all love. We all hate. We all fight. We all flee. We all die. Yet, we all believe that we are eternal. Some of us lead. The rest of us obey. One of us calls us to die for our nation, another calls such pursuit a juvenile disease. And yet we celebrate both of them as heroes. Is it a race? I wonder. All of us start in right earnest. Some lose hope midway and drop out to the side lines to watch the rest sweat and tear away to glory. Our hearts burn with jealousy, as we cry out- It is not fair, that the winner should take it all. And out of the fire is born communism, with a glorious purpose- to establish a new world order that embodies the spirit of oneness, equality of mankind and empowerment of the classes, that is, those who dropped out of the race, and what happened to those who continued to run, they ended up at the finishing line. And they painfully realized that it was the same line where it had all begun. They had discovered their limits of endurance and overcome pain. As they held the trophies of the victory proudly over their heads, to the silent cheers of a non-existent crowd, the truth was revealed, there was no race. They all ran together but they were all alone. In victory or in defeat, there is no companion.

The race was not an illusion. But there is an illusion in the way the entire world is schemed. It is in the thought that we are competing against one another. Many a lifetime is lost in seeing through this illusion, but none a few ever seem to want to accept that at the substratum of this struggle is a never-ending war with our fears and inhibitions. The illusion gives us a reason to live for. We accept the need for such an illusion unquestioningly for it is convenient to do so. Out of this need to rationalize the illusion was born –the angelic devil called religion. What defied reason was deified and put beyond the grasp of our intellect. And religion gave a new meaning to illusion alluded to the race. It was the search of the truth.

As the illusion of the race was so overpowering, most of us never found any need to seek anything out. We all ran because there were others running too. Some of us unsatisfied with the lack of purpose in the race searched, deep within their thoughts, found some truths and revealed it to the others. The rest of us judged and chose our paths. Some truths appealed to us, while the rest appalled. So we became Hindus, Christians and Moslems. We regaled in our wisdom in choosing the true ‘truth’ that we decided that our progeny should follow our path. In doing so, we protected them from the pain that our pursuits of the truth had inflicted upon us. Unwittingly though, we denied them the chance to inquire and find for themselves. So armed with immutable truths our own children fought among themselves, killed in the name of a Holy War to save their faith and in their death passed to their children, the seeds born out of the Holy Wars- distrust and hatred.

These seeds grew into huge powerful trees. From these trees grew forests and the forests became the breeding grounds for new warriors and new methods of warfare. When we organized into strong political societies, we could not silence our critics by the sword easily anymore, so we developed a new method of warfare- deceit and exploitation of misery. The race still continues, the stadium changes, the background changes, the athletes change, the nature of the rivalry changes, and yet one thing never changes. We still do not know, why we are doing what we are doing.