And God was born!

As a child I used to often wonder about God and had many ifs and buts. I was almost sure that I was not a believer. But I was also unsure about being an atheist. Thankfully there was no urgent need to stake any claim.

Tagging along with my elders, I enjoyed religious ceremonies. They were fun. But while growing up, I started searching for meanings in these festivities and rituals. The available answers confused me further. I started the process of disowning but somehow, I could never become a staunch atheist. I found it equally hard to be a believer, even a minor one. That is when I came across the term agnostic and temporarily found my noun. Thankfully, temporary was the only thing permanent!

For me the idea of God did not revolve around the idea of creation. Big bang, Adam & Eve, or cosmic sound – it really did not matter. Mine was more of a utilitarian search. The larger question was about why do we need God? Even if it was She who created us, why would anyone create people, aka subjects, to be eternally grateful to Them? If God really exists, then my guess is She may be finding the notion of prayer pretty demeaning. If yes, why doesn’t She get angry and take some action against the defaulters? Wait… what are the chances that prayer too was an action defined in the original design as some sort of inbuilt self-correcting mechanism for re-instilling hope? And if not, then what are the chances that She has abandoned us as Her failed project?

By the way, usage of the term She is not to associate any gender with God but question the very premise of the commonly used pronoun. Was God an answer for all the unanswered queries in a male dominated world which was continually searching for closures? Was God a theoretical answer to all uncertainties and ambiguities because men want to feel that they are in control? Was it a personification of an abstract realization? Or was it a humble surrender because trying to know more made us realise how little we knew?

My search for the utilitarian reasons of this rather strange relationship continues. I think that God, even in its weakest interpretation, carries value because ignorance and uncertainty makes humans fragile. While I sat down to articulate these ideas in detail, I also ended up gathering my wandering thoughts and shaping them into words to carve out a poem. And that is what I share – as an idea, as a probable answer, as a question…

And God was born!

Naked they sat,
under the apple tree,
Adam and Eve,
watching the sun,
go down!

The red,
flirted,
with the yellow,
and the silver,
lined the clouds.

“O! It is so beautiful!”,
they exclaimed.
And then,
came darkness,
engulfing everything visible.

They,
Adam and Eve,
moved closer, with fear,
into each other’s arms,
and began to cry.

They cried,
for the earth,
and its end.
They cried for life,
and its end.

They cried,
for every plant,
and every animal.
They cried all night,
for themselves too!

Their tired eyes
soaked in tears,
went to sleep,
believing that
this was THE end!

As they slept,
exhausted and lost,
the reds and yellows came back,
and came back the silver lining
of the distant clouds.

The sun came back,
the earth came back,
the plants, the animals,
the insects, the birds…
they ALL came back!

But the damage
was already done,
God already conceived,
conceptualized, created,
and codified!

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5 Responses

  1. Vinita says:

    Have you found the answer to how did Adam and Eve came into existence?

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