All of the world’s rocket scientists would one day get together and have a proper debate about divinity, Godliness and other-worldly landscapes such as Heaven and Hell. They would go on to discover and establish the true nature of God and the other worlds. Once this is done, economists and entrepreneurs would conjoin their intellects to determine the fairness of various divine currencies. Computer techies would help build a computerized stock exchange, sacred doctors would alleviate souls, students would learn how to die properly, theology would be obsolete and Quantum Mechanics would be thoroughly understood, the curvature of the universe would be at the proverbial stone’s throw from us.
All these possibilities exist, but first – Ajay Ramaswamy had to find God.
Bowing down before the ornate marble statues of Hindu God Krishna and his cohort Radha, Ajay wondered if they ever existed or if they are simply glorified works of fiction, like Star Trek. He often wondered if there was even a God – an all knowing entity high up in the Heavens that looked over him and took an intricate interest in his’s day to day deeds – both vile and virtuous. At 23, Ajay was questioning the nature of this very entity who has been bestowed with infinite power, magnanimous authority and copious amount of respect by everyone that follows Him.
And then as the clamor of bells commenced and the smell of incense broke the solemn calm of his questioning mind, Ajay looked up – to his right was Chandran, his brother, two years his junior. Chandran’s eyes were closed and his lips moving in sync with the mantras being chanted on the loud speaker. For a second Ajay is tempted to slap his brother on the back, but he resists the temptation in an attempt to preserve the Godliness of such a sanctimoniously sacred venue.
Sanctimonious because Ajay knew that the priest who so sincerely seemed to be chanting away in Sanskrit had cheated on his wife with the temple maid – driving the 15-year-old lower-caste maid to suicide and his wife to medical insanity. Ajay knew this, because everybody knew this. This was a Sunday topic of discussion at breakfast tables across Hindu households in Scarborough, a little suburb of the burgeoning city of Toronto. Yet, today, the gossiping householders are gathered, at the best of their behavior, in a ceremony presided by a man who epitomized the term “despicable monster with pus-filled cysts” – even by non-religious standards. Here was a pedophile, wife beater dispensing morals to one and all.
Ajay realized the hypocrisy but who was he to change society. Even Plato couldn’t change society in his times, Ajay often thought to himself. Plus, he had a million other things to worry about – bad grades and graduate applications were the least of them – Ajay was more concerned about his own sly trades – sex, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and eating freshly slaughtered cow-meat every now and then. And yet, there he is – questioning, yet compliant. Sinning, yet the most virtuous.
So, at the end of the rabid chanting, belling, singing, dancing and incense burning, it was finally time for the prashad – the fat, diabetic lady at the end of the line had shot herself with two syringes of pancreas-juice to prepare her body for the onslaught of sugar that was coming. When Ajay’s turn came, he cupped his palms, looked down and accepted his prashad and popped it in his mouth. The questions, the despise and the sheer worries of his lifestyle on the sly – everything dissolved with the sugar on his tongue. Thirty seconds later it was time for him to go home – to the real world, a world almost plagued by pragmatism, technology, terrorism and other such universal evils that permeate our social realm, much like divinity.
Slipping his wet sneakers on Ajay gestures Chandran to hurry up. The brothers open the glass doors to their parking lot that has been raped by winter winds and has morphed into a big, black, block of ice. Resisting a bad fall, they slip into Ajay’s little red Honda Civic, skidding out of the parking lot, carefully pulling up to the main road and finally heading home.
All these possibilities exist, but first – Ajay Ramaswamy had to find God.
Bowing down before the ornate marble statues of Hindu God Krishna and his cohort Radha, Ajay wondered if they ever existed or if they are simply glorified works of fiction, like Star Trek. He often wondered if there was even a God – an all knowing entity high up in the Heavens that looked over him and took an intricate interest in his’s day to day deeds – both vile and virtuous. At 23, Ajay was questioning the nature of this very entity who has been bestowed with infinite power, magnanimous authority and copious amount of respect by everyone that follows Him.
And then as the clamor of bells commenced and the smell of incense broke the solemn calm of his questioning mind, Ajay looked up – to his right was Chandran, his brother, two years his junior. Chandran’s eyes were closed and his lips moving in sync with the mantras being chanted on the loud speaker. For a second Ajay is tempted to slap his brother on the back, but he resists the temptation in an attempt to preserve the Godliness of such a sanctimoniously sacred venue.
Sanctimonious because Ajay knew that the priest who so sincerely seemed to be chanting away in Sanskrit had cheated on his wife with the temple maid – driving the 15-year-old lower-caste maid to suicide and his wife to medical insanity. Ajay knew this, because everybody knew this. This was a Sunday topic of discussion at breakfast tables across Hindu households in Scarborough, a little suburb of the burgeoning city of Toronto. Yet, today, the gossiping householders are gathered, at the best of their behavior, in a ceremony presided by a man who epitomized the term “despicable monster with pus-filled cysts” – even by non-religious standards. Here was a pedophile, wife beater dispensing morals to one and all.
Ajay realized the hypocrisy but who was he to change society. Even Plato couldn’t change society in his times, Ajay often thought to himself. Plus, he had a million other things to worry about – bad grades and graduate applications were the least of them – Ajay was more concerned about his own sly trades – sex, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and eating freshly slaughtered cow-meat every now and then. And yet, there he is – questioning, yet compliant. Sinning, yet the most virtuous.
So, at the end of the rabid chanting, belling, singing, dancing and incense burning, it was finally time for the prashad – the fat, diabetic lady at the end of the line had shot herself with two syringes of pancreas-juice to prepare her body for the onslaught of sugar that was coming. When Ajay’s turn came, he cupped his palms, looked down and accepted his prashad and popped it in his mouth. The questions, the despise and the sheer worries of his lifestyle on the sly – everything dissolved with the sugar on his tongue. Thirty seconds later it was time for him to go home – to the real world, a world almost plagued by pragmatism, technology, terrorism and other such universal evils that permeate our social realm, much like divinity.
Slipping his wet sneakers on Ajay gestures Chandran to hurry up. The brothers open the glass doors to their parking lot that has been raped by winter winds and has morphed into a big, black, block of ice. Resisting a bad fall, they slip into Ajay’s little red Honda Civic, skidding out of the parking lot, carefully pulling up to the main road and finally heading home.
