Ctulu dawn....

A belief in the supernatural comes with a weakening of the self….

A long time ago, the earth was a lonely place. The population was too little, the land was too barren, or may be too forested, or too icy and there were wild beasts, for taming animals was not known. It was the treacherous place where only the fittest survived. Man was weak; man was vulnerable; man was helpless against nature. Out there, God was the only protector.

Then some wise guy invented the wheel and some other discovered fire, and all that jazz. Populations grew, tribes began to form and civilizations began to happen. God this time, was not just a protector; religion became a way of life for the people, a way of disciplining the masses, a means of suppressing the old animal instincts. Gods were on top of unreachable hills, God was the holy Mother in nature, God was the one supreme power the people bowed down to.

The civilizations grew and came into conflict with one another. Powers, wealth and egos grew. And there were battles, battles for food, for land, or simply, supremacy. For the weak tribes God was the only saviour. The victorious kings declared themselves God or God incarnate. The ancient Egyptian kings and queens, for example, were not just rulers of the land, they were Gods…the new Isis, the new Dionysus .

The egos had grown too big, the men too powerful to let them be. So, obviously, God had to intervene. The army of the Pharaoh was swept away in the Nile, pursuing the meagre army of Moses. Watch “The Prince of Egypt” for the details. Sometime later Cleopatra the VII and Marcus Antonius committed suicide and Egypt became a Roman province. Their pyramids, their script, their riches, their Gods, left as ruins in the sand to be discovered by archaeologists and excavators almost two millennia hence.

In pre-Islamic Arabia a viceroy of the prince of Abyssinia, Abraha al-Ashram, set out to destroy an eminent pagan temple of the Arabs, for he had built a church in Yemen, with crosses of gold and silver, and marbles, precious stones, and he intended to divert the pilgrims to this place. An elephant in their army struck terror in the hearts of the Arabs, and they fled to the hills, leaving their temple to the mercy of their God. Without resistance the Abyssinian army marched on, but were wiped out when, allegedly, a strong wind blew and birds flew in from the sea with stones of baked clay in their beaks to stone them to their death. Divine intervention? You decide…

History is full of such stories, but over the centuries religion has become more defined. And man has learnt from his experiences. The questioning nature of people became philosophy has become exact science. The mystics, the fanatics, the Renaissance, the Crusades ,the World Wars, women’s liberation and the bra burning, we’ve seen it all. And we know better now than blind belief, don’t we?

We know how buying is important for economies to grow. So we buy whatever we want, which is everything. We know we’ll run out of oil in 40 years, so we’ve got research on alternate fuels going on. We know Sania Mirza’s skirt is too short, so we’ve got fatwas against that. We know Yog is good for our health, so we’ve got Ramdev’s DVDs in our collection. And we know that nudity is no crime when everyone’s naked.

In the past only the kings had access to luxury. The poor common man just had his God. But everything you could ever dream of is now selling at your nearest retail outlet. The best jewellery, diamonds and gold, the most comfortable beds, the most extravagant clothes, the best food, wine, the best ways to travel, everything’s in our grasp now, and we’ve got credit card companies to broaden the grasp, if, by any chance, it’s just a little small. Live your life, king size.

Nature too is in our control now. The water flow at man’s will. The night lights up brighter than the day. We know when a volcano will erupt, when it’ll rain, when the waves will come crashing down…Ya, there are hiccups sometimes, you know, Hurricane Katrina, Rita, et al, but that’s just what they are, hiccups.

I was once told, if you want to feel the existence of God, look at his creation in nature and ponder over it, the blue seas, the waterfalls, the snow clad mountains, the orchards, the flowers in bloom…but the truth is, who needs God now?

Go to Gurgaon sometime, at night if you can, and look at the Convergys building with the slanted beams, and the DLF building with the boat-shaped top. And stand on the Delhi-Gurgaon highway, at the place where all the malls are. Stand with the MG mall on one side of the road and a couple of others at the other side. And look at the high point of our society; the glittering sign boards, the flashy lights, the imported merchandise, the beautiful people in their beautiful cars with their beautiful girlfriends...and ask yourself, is there a need of God? Ask yourself, if you don’t get lost in the glitter and the glamour; and before you get over them there’ll be even better places, right next to the ones now. Man, the innovator; Man, the Creator.

The people of Alexandria used to think they were the most advanced and intelligent race on Earth. Until it was all wiped out…

Where are we going now, with our we’re-in-it-for-the-money attitude, our weapons of mass-satisfaction and our morality-with-convenience culture? Do we need Divine Intervention to make us humble again? But the scales too big now. It’s not just a city in Egypt or a king in Abyssinia or a tribe on the banks of the Euphrates. For all our globalization, it’s the human race. Judgement Day, perhaps?

I read somewhere that a heard of marching elephants leaves no other in its wake. Except when its headed for a cliff. Then it doesn’t even leave itself.