Word Test
Rohit | 25 August 2004, 4:14am
Tonight, I
helped an old woman cross the road. And, though I did have that glow of 'doing
your good deed for the day' for a while it quickly faded and I was overcome by a
different kind of emotion.
Why do people have to grow old? Why can't they
just decide to die someday without going through the misery of old age? Is old
age life's way of handing back to us what we gave others during those moments of
youthful indiscretion?
Every once in a while when I decide to do the
grocery, I see old couples walking down the street carrying a few bags in their
old wrinkled hands that contain the provisions that would get them through the
week. Their children are probably sitting comfortably in their plush apartments
somewhere in New York or Seattle oblivious to what their parents have to go
through just to make sure that food gets to their table.
Is it what I
will go through once I get... I can't even get myself to say the 'O-L-D' word.
It is too scary a thought that someday it will be my turn. I will be that man
who has to walk the road everyday to buy provisions because he is too weak to
carry a month's supply. Someday it will be I who has to seek help to cross the
road. Someday these legs would be too old to walk a mile and the hands too old
to hold a cup of tea. Someday I would die. That would be deliverance. But, why
do I have to go through suffering before that?
I do not believe in the
doctrine of karma that says people only get what they deserve. What is the fault
of an infant born into a family so poor and undernourished that his mother is
not strong enough to be able to breast feed him? However bad his karma might
have been does it really justify his not getting food, the basic right of every
animal on this planet?
May be it is not. May be it is just God's way of
pleasing his sick ego that he is all pervading and powerful. May be that is how
he gets his kicks by playing with us. May be God himself is not so perfect after
all. May be all the praises that we sing for him are overrated. May be he is the
devil's alter ego. Who knows?
But, what I do know for certain is that a
person so infinitely capable of compassion as he is made out to be is not
capable of causing hurt and sufferring. So, may be I am right. He is, for all
that he wants us to think, just a slob like one of us. Or may be he is us. All
of us, manifested into one supreme being having great power and, along with it,
great chances of abusing that power.
That hurts. We all know that evil is
supposed to do, well, evil. But is God not supposed to thwart all its schemes?
Is that not the very purpose of his being? Then why is he not fulfilling that
purpose? Perhaps he is just a conniving heartless soul. If all people were happy
and content, would he not be out of business? Then how does he differ from
Microsoft?
The truth is, he doesn't.
Current Mood: Amazed
Current Music: a
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