godless'ness'

I saw a cross among a crowd of buildings while driving on a flyover, atop a church which was not visible. It had red lighting along it edges which made it stand out against the black and white background, the blackness of the night sky and the dull white of tall buildings. Cars move fast on a flyover since there are no speed breakers, no traffic so obviously the cross vanished from my sight as soon as it had appeared, yet I had a desire to stare at it hard and long. It was a fleeting but fetching sight, as exhilarating as spotting a shooting star. And just like a shooting star is lost before we can close our eyes and wish for our deepest desires to come true, this bleeding cross passed me in a flash. I’m not a Christian and neither a religious soul at least not in the way people define being religious. Yet the sight of the red shining cross overwhelmed by huge buildings made me wonder if in our city god feels a little claustrophobic. The city life, the busy life, the hard life has profaned god; god is now just another building among a plethora of others albeit of a different shape and size as though we have shown some grace and kindness to him by placing him in a different looking building. A building with a dome houses Allah, a building with a cross is the abode of Jesus, and a building with ornate carvings is where the Indian idols (not the singing variety) reside. It’s easy to recognize each of these buildings and their respective gods but it is easier to ignore them in a city like ours. How many times have we crossed these buildings and spat on the pavement in front of these sacrosanct structures? the adventurous few have also relieved their bladders on the walls surrounding these buildings. They do not have anything against god per se; there isn’t any real malice in their hearts, just that public toilets are a huge paucity in our city and like all other things we men have little patience and perseverance when it comes to controlling the pressure. At least gods have some space left to themselves, we humans are overflowing everywhere like flooded drains, and I think we are invading god’s space in more ways than one.


A bizarre question comes to my mind; many would think it rather perverse, what is more important for the bustling cityscape more toilets or more space for god? I think I’d avoid answering the question lest the VHP, the Fatwa Committee n all other religious organizations label me a blaspheme for equating toilets to religious spaces and pose serious threats to my existence on the planet. All I’m saying is that both toilets and gods are a necessity for most of us and both are having an existential crisis in our city’s public space.

God made us we are made to believe, god made earth our home then why on earth are we limiting god’s spaces, these days all we get in the name of houses are concrete boxes, with very little space for our own existence, so god’s space in our homes have reduced too, mostly its gone. Though strangely enough we have nicer toilets, with new state of art equipments like jet sprays! Clearly we are not giving god his due space. We are the meanest children that ever could be.

But then again the battle for space is not simply physical; I think what has transformed more dramatically than the cityscape is our mindscapes. We haven’t forgotten god, god forbid us if we do. We are still very religious, when we are very tired we do say “oh god”, when the examination papers are difficult we do say ‘shit god’ when we see that snobbish hot babe in skimpy clothes walking ahead of us we whisper ‘oh my god’, when we see couples indulging in public display of affection we exclaim ‘hey ram’ when we can’t bear those aches we shout ‘ya Allah’ when we have forgetten something that we should have remembered we cant help but sigh ‘jesus!’ of course we pray to god morning , day and night, reminding him off all the things he hasn’t given us like good marks, nice salary, hot partner, the latest mobile phone, the split A/C, the flat with a verandah and before I forget the angrezi style toilet, we remind him that we love him and because we love him he must love us back and the only way he can convince us of his love is by giving us, through some ingenious twist of fate what we don’t have. We also need god to blame him for all the things we haven’t been able to accomplish. Its difficult enough to accept failures in a city where we are judged all the time, to take the blame for the same is just beyond human capabilities, so there always a god in hand to dump our failures upon, truly a god in times of such pressing needs is a god indeed. But of course we are religious people; we are as religious as we can conveniently be.

In a city like ours, its not god who has created us, it is we who have created god, a god we can conveniently pray to, love, ignore, hate, argue with, philosophize about, riot over and most importantly dominate. We provide him space if we chose to; we kick him out if there’s no room for him, we follow him only through our selfish motives, we take him for granted like spoilt children. In a city like ours god has ceased to reside in our edacious hearts. He is a figment of our stressed out minds, a cheap and effective balm to the headaches that the city life gives us. In a city like ours there is no real god, it is we who have perfected the art of playing with gods and deceptively letting god assume that its him who calls the shots, truly the only space god can claim today is a fool’s paradise.

by
zaid al baset
© 2008 by Zaid