Oh God !!

This article (including the title) was written by me in 2001, in third year of college. I have tried my best to reproduce it as it was, though I cannot find a copy of the printed article. The magazine in college was entitled “Views Paper”.

Father: “Son, what would you rather be? A tall tree or a blade of grass?”
Son: “A tall tree, father.”
Father: “Son, when the storm comes, it uproots tall trees but leaves a blade of grass unharmed.”

- The Panchatantra

The little boy watched in horror as lambs were sacrificed at God’s altar. One by one. The sanctum became an exhibit of blood and gore.  Fifty one lives in all. Given in vain for the betterment of a “higher” life form – humans. Another episode of Heads and Tails was over. That day a professed believer turned into a confirmed atheist. This is an ordinary story of that ordinary boy.

“Why do we need to believe in God?” he asked himself, at the age of fourteen where his peers were busy oogling over the pleasures of that age – or the things that they believed are pleasure giving. “Is that what it has come down to? Sacrificing other’s lives for the sake of ours. Do we own Life? How many times do we steal, lie, hurt others’ feelings and feel good about it? How much sin ultimately makes you fit for nothing. Where is the defining line between selfish pleasure and sin? How much is too much?”

A person is made of clay. Clay once moulded and hardened cannot be shaped – only broken. The little boy had lost all faith in God and the ways that people believed are God’s own. He researched it all. National Geographic. Teachings of the Bhagwad Gita, the Buddha and philosophers alike. Dictionaries, Thesauruses, Encyclopedias, Atlases, Scientific Journals and stray magazines. Something was still missing. Nothing was complete. The boy even went to the temple(s) if his parents told him to, because it made them happy. But something inside him was taking shape. Something that would change him forever and define him as a MAN.

One winter morning in January, sitting by the window and looking at the falling snow, the boy picked up his schoolbook, a collection of poems titles “Flights of Fantasy” and began perusing its contents. Then he saw it. It was there. A code of condut more profound than all the religious scriptures in the world. A short poem by Rudyard Kipling. . Four stanzas, twenty four lines. And it had all there was to the meaning of life. That was the way he would live. He was his own GOD. And fourteen. What was amazing about the short poem was that thought it was one person’s thought, it was applicable to each and everyone, without bias.

And the little boy made up his own motto:

3 deadly weapons: Wit, Brains and Brawn.
2 ruthless enemies: Conventionalism and Time.
1 insane ambition: Perfection.

Over time the little boy got absorbed into the mainstream of conventionalism. But he never gave up what he was symbolic of – himself. He never lost what people around him seemed to lose everyday – identity. It might have been a coincidence that when that little boy pursued engineering his roll number was 98321.

That little boy was me.